Every interaction with a customer including complaints is an opportunity to build or strengthen our bridges with our customers. Very often we find our customer-facing staff blowing away this opportunity that lands on our lap for free. To better understand this gift recall what we go through when we go out to engage a customer unsolicited.
And how do we blow it away? Usually by keeping our interaction down to a crisp and a minimal response demanded by the context. Technically flawless, business-wise not so wise. Of course at the other extreme, we might have a loquacious rep overdoing it pushing the customer to annoyance.
What then do we do with this opportunity? Well, there are several avenues to be explored: we could gain useful insights into his decision making process (why or how did he settle on our product?), his experience with competitors, his post-purchase impressions, what else would he like to see as features, does he see enough of our brand publicity… If it is a complaint, information about events leading to the failure could be collected. Did he have other issues/signals before the failure occurred? Does he have thoughts on how this failure could have been possibly averted? Of course what would work depends on the temperature of the call.
All of these cannot happen without orienting our customer-facing staff adequately, constructing different possible scenarios and outlining avenues for enriching the interaction.
Note outsourced call-centers are optimized to enhance calls handled in a day rather than quality engagement with the caller, at once totally eliminating this opportunity.
Incidentally all of the above apply to our interactions with prospects too.
Here’s a short well-written piece from Art Petty on this same theme exhorting us to have transformational interaction instead of transactional. A personal experience included. So why settle for less when its potential benefits could be dramatic?
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