Negative Results Costing you Business
A basic truism – “Perfection is the lowest standard” – applies to just about every business situation. While you want your company, service, or product to be outstanding and offer lots of value to clients and customers, pursuing perfection will not get you very far. In fact, pursuing perfection would guarantee that your company doors would never even open.
Of course, if your company is not perfect, negative results will sometimes occur. The delivery will be delayed, a customer will be billed incorrectly, or an employee will be less than pleasant with an important client. No matter how carefully you structure your business, sometimes your results will be imperfect.
In today’s world, though, one negative result can quickly be broadcast over the Internet. One disgruntled customer can share their negative experiences with hundreds, or even thousands, of potential customers via high-ranking forums, blogs, and social networking sites. The determined customer can even set up a site dedicated to highlighting poor experiences with your company. PayPal, for example, has a high-ranking critical website, PayPalSucks.com. When customers Google PayPal, they often see the detractor’s website as well as the official company website displayed on the same page.
The first step in dealing with irate customers is to realize that bad results do happen. Not every customer will be pleased with your company, and your business will not always be able to offer the best value. When it comes to minimizing the negative results that customer criticism can bring, start with an investigation. Are customers justified in being irate? Are there things your company can change to make customer experiences better? If so, go ahead and make the changes and then advertise those changes online. Customers will not generally hold onto a negative view of your business if you make real efforts to change your best practices.
In the same token, you might want to open discussion with online detractors. Address the poor customer service, apologize where necessary or ask for more information and then find out what can be done to make the customer feel mollified. In many cases, a replacement product, a formal apology, a refund, or a discount on future service is all it takes to make a customer feel better about a bad experience. Once the customer is appeased, they will have no reason to continue broadcasting their bad experience.
If you have several customers making different types of complaints, it may not be feasible to change one or two aspects of your business. For example, if some customers are publicly deriding your high prices while other customers are loudly calling for higher-end products, you may not be able to appease both customers. In cases where the criticism seems especially loud, you may need professionals to monitor and neutralize bad publicity so that you can focus on a bright business future.