What’s customer service mean to you?

Do you remember the days when you had a complaint about a product you purchased, and the merchant would gladly refund your money or offer you whatever was needed to appease you. I do. I remember when faulty products or improperly cooked meals were fixed because companies wanted to make their customers happy.

Where have those days gone? This recently occurred to me when I brought a mistake to the attention of a clerk at a clothing store, and the clerk happily provided a refund. I was shocked that they actually helped me and didn’t shuffle me off to “talk to someone else”. After thinking about it, I was shocked that I was shocked – because that’s what you’re supposed to do when your company makes a mistake – you’re supposed to make it right.

These days if I call a company’s customer service number, it’s been rare to come away from the experience as a satisfied customer. The motto that “the customer is always right” has long since been forgotten. Granted, the reasoning behind this is that some “customers” take advantage of customer service and demand things they just don’t deserve.

So as business owners what do we do? How do we distinguish between the customer who is just trying to get something for free, and the customer who just wants a good experience? Some situations are blaringly obvious and I think we can start there. The harder part comes when you have you decide when a customer is walking the fine line between the two.

It may be a good practice to remember that if you cannot tell, there is a 50% chance this is an innocent customer just looking for a good experience. Being in the business of providing a good experience to all customers is usually more profitable than to turn away complaints.

I think it’s time for us business owners to go back to the basics of “the customer is always right”. Let’s get back to providing quality service to our customers, they deserve it – and so do we.

Comments

[Caroline "Kayo" Parsons-Korn]

It used to be you bought Quickbooks and registered your product online and went about on your merry way. Sure you are constantly bombarded with ads for addition features you don't need every time you sent out an invoice, but I could just skip past those.
So when I purchased QuickbooksPro 2009 and went to registered my product I was surprised to see I had to call to get a validation code. So I call, I'm connected to a call center in India where I talk to Joseph. He tells me it will take about two minutes to get the code and then proceeds to try to sell me up to online backup services. I tell him, "no thank you, please just give me my validation code". He continues to harangue me trying to get me to buy more stuff. Again I say no thanks, just get my code. And he goes on again.

I'm not complaining because you use off shore call centers, I guess that is just a fact of life anymore. But if I say no thank you, that should be it. That's what I call good customer service. Not a hard sell for more products I don't need.

I suspect this will never see the light of day on this blog.

[Business Training in Spanish]

I'm glad you posted this - customer service is definitely an often neglected part of small business, but it should not be forgotten how important it is! I work for a company that does Quickbooks Training in Spanish (http://www.quickseminars.com), and while we help others learn the necessary QB skills, we also hold customer service at the highest rank.

[Host_Amy]

Caroline, thank you for your feedback, I will definitly forward that on to the appropriate department.

Thanks!
Amy