People who walk away from your business with a negative impression will tell 4-5x as many people about their negative experience as your fans tell their friends about their awesome ones. Here's how to lower the number of upset customers.
We're going to look at two scenarios that recently happened to me while I was dining out.
Scenario #1:
I celebrated my 30th birthday a few days ago, and my family generally goes out to eat to celebrate a birthday. So we set up lunch for a downtown restaurant here in Chattanooga.
My wife and I sat down to wait on my parents, sisters, and brother-in-law, and while we were waiting, another family sat down at the table next to us - dad, mom, 3 kids around 6-12 years old. Soon after, the rest of our party arrived and we got our orders in.
It was about 1:30 pm and the place was pretty dead - about half full but plenty of empty tables to be found. So it struck me as strange that we kept waiting...and waiting..and waiting on our food. It took a long time, a longer wait time than you would expect at this place. About the time I commented to my wife, 'This is taking a while', our food came out and everyone was happy.
I noticed, however, that well into our meal the family next to us did not have their food - and then realized that they had been waiting even longer than we had. So I did a bit of eavesdropping when I saw one of the managers, who had been working on his computer, head out through the dining room. When he stopped by their table and asked 'How is everything today?', the lady said disappointingly, 'We have been waiting a very long time for our food, and we haven't seen our waiter, and we don't have any silverware.'
Without missing a beat, the manager says 'I'll be right back with some', and leaves the scene.
Scenario #2:
I went out to dinner recently with a friend to catch up. He wanted to go to a place on my side of town - a place that I've been to a few times and I like but don't frequent too often.
So we get there, sit down, spend some time looking at the menu. After entering our order, the waitress comes back to say, unfortunately, they were out of the beer that my friend wanted - and apparently had been for some time. Strike 1.
Then we order our food, and after checking with the kitchen, our waitress comes back to say - you guessed it - 'We're out.' Strike 2.
Once our food comes out, it turns out they messed up my sandwich. Strike 3. And by this point, I'm an unhappy camper. So as she comes back by, I tell her about the messed up order and I'm just about to start in when she looks down, shakes her head, and says 'Man, I'm sorry: we are really sucking today.' I could barely contain my laughter as I chuckled out 'No kidding.'
Which of the two people featured - the manager at lunch or the waitress at dinner - handled their negative customer interaction better? It probably won't surprise you when I say the waitress from dinner.
So what made her reaction better, and how does that apply to your business?
We all have customers, we all have customer expectations, and we all have days where we really suck. What are some ways to minimize the negative impact?
1) Listen.
My waitress didn't just hear me - just my content, my words. She was listening: she picked up that my tone of voice was shifting, that I was becoming more and more unhappy with the service and product, that I was getting frustrated with what was going on. My emotions were taking on more prominence. You want your customer service representatives to be good listeners, and empathizers. They know exactly what its like to be frustrated and have shattered expectations, and can tap into those feelings easily to relate to the customer.
2) Stick it out.
The first move the manager made when he started getting some negative feedback was to leave! He straight up left the table. My waitress did the exact opposite: she stood right there and owned up. Our first reaction when we encounter a negative or tense situation is, generally, to run away and avoid. But if you leave before you've really listened to the customer and spent some time empathizing with them, they are most certainly going to walk away with a negative impression of you, your company, or your product.
3) Address specific concerns.
There's no doubt the lady was upset about not having any silverware and she wanted it fixed. It just wasn't the most important issue. So make sure, only after doing steps 1 and 2, to address the issues and fix the problems. Issues with product or process are very important to customers, so don't stop the service process until you fix the issues.
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