On my drive to work, the local radio station made a joke about a new mobile app that allows you to type the bad news you have to deliver in English then spits out the translation in Spanish.
While the mobile app isn’t real (why not?!), we must ask the question:
Why Spanish?
A recent study shows that Spanish is the happiest language, using more positive words than negative. English came in third. Chinese came in last of the 10 languages.
Therefore, if we were to deliver bad news in Spanish, it may not sound, well, so bad.
In customer service, we are constantly looking for ways to turn negatives into positives.
Perhaps we should all learn Spanish and deliver our not so happy news to our customers?
Just kidding.
But, this does bring up a good point:
How do we deliver the not so good news to our customers in the best way possible?
Mistakes happen. Programs break. Features do not work.
And, we all know what occurs after this:
–>Our call queue raises and so does our patience (and that of our customer).
So what’s the best way to deliver the news to the customer?
Ask yourself this question:
What would YOU want to hear?
- Would you prefer to hear a frosted over answer, sprinkled with fake smiles?
- Would you prefer to hear the honest, super technical truth of the situation?
- Would you prefer to hear a mix of both?
While you can only spin something so many ways, we recommend moving toward the side of honesty over frosted smiles.
But HOW do you do this?
Here are THREE handy happy tips:
- Think Before You Speak: Review your words and your facts before you share them with the customer. Do you need approval for legal reasons before admitting that something on your end broke? Seek out what you need and consider all honest options before breaking the news.
- Show Empathy: Your customer isn’t going to be happy knowing something isn’t working. Stand in their shoes and toss in genuine empathy–and mean it–while giving them the low down on the situation.
- Take Responsibility: If your company is at fault, own it. Take full responsibility for what happened and see it through to the end and make sure you have done everything in your power to get it fixed and follow up with the customer.
