An unhappy customer may seem like an irrelevancy, but an unhappy customer is a symbol. What you may not know is that for every customer who complains there are 26 customers who don’t say anything. This means you’re losing far more customers than you think.
Winning back an unhappy customer is relatively easy. Protecting your online reputation through winning back unhappy customers should be a top priority. When people see how you treat your target audience they’re more likely to buy from you. It’s a great way to build your brand.
So how do you go about dealing with that unhappy customer?
Listen to What the Customer has to Say
Begin by hearing the customer out. Listening is the most important part of the entire process. You shouldn’t assume they’re wrong or they don’t know what they’re talking about. Hear them out and let them vent, even if it involves a lot of four-letter words.
The best way to approach an unhappy customer is to spend your time looking at things from an objective point of view. Resist the temptation to cut them off or to argue back.
Listening to them will allow them to get the aggression out of their system. And this strategy will allow you to generate more B2B sales for the rest of this year.
Try to Identify with Their Issues
Empathizing with your unhappy customer may seem difficult, but it’s a necessary step before you try to apologize. Customers are rarely unhappy with anything less than a perfect level of service, which is a major problem for companies that are coming up short.
Let’s say someone is unhappy about the pros and cons of selling a structured settlement. They’re thinking about how you didn’t say this or that. The answer is to empathize and say how annoyed you’d be if the same thing happened to them. This sort of talk leads nicely into an apology.
It’s not necessarily simple to empathize with a problem, especially if that problem happens to be stupid, but you have to do it for the sake of your brand.
Find the Solution
No business can afford to upset customers, but groveling doesn’t actually solve the problem. By all means, spend your time talking to customers about how you won’t do something again, but this all has to culminate in some form of solution. Think about how you can right the alleged wrong.
Take note, your customer isn’t going to tell you exactly what they need to do. Most of them will be so blinded by their own rage they won’t be able to think of a solution. You need to find the solution through asking questions.
Start by asking questions that don’t warrant specific answers about their experience and what they think went wrong. A lot of people only look for their complaint to be acknowledged. They won’t want anything more than that. But with open-ended questions you can find out if you can do anything.
Even if you can’t fulfill their request just acknowledging their problems can be enough to retain that customer and continue growing your startup fast.
Take Care of the Issue Right Now
If you’re serious about helping customers solve their problems you should aim to act as soon as you can. Handling the problem as soon as possible will ensure your customer feels like they’re the main priority. Allowing situations to drag on and on will make the situation worse.
With any luck, you should take care of the situation within a couple of hours. This will ensure that the problem doesn’t drag and the customer is impressed by how much you seem to care.
As previously mentioned, a lot of customers don’t expect anything to actually happen they just want to have their problems acknowledged.
Conclusion – Stop it from Happening Again
Problems happen because of something on your end. Sometimes customer complaints are monumentally stupid and you don’t need to take any further action. But sometimes customers will bring up perfectly valid flaws within your corporate structure.
You should be thankful these customers have spoken up because they can prevent you from losing even more customers. There are so many companies that have managed to lose their customers and they don’t know why because none of them spoke up. Listen to their feedback and act on that feedback.
Your company should be permanently evolving and changing. Through doing this you can always give the best possible customer experience!
