Sometimes it may seem like they’re looking for trouble, but complaining customers are probably just looking for a solution to a frustrating problem.
If you provide excellent customer service and follow procedures, complaints should be rare. When they do occur however, stay calm. Breathe.
I know, staying calm is tough when your patience is challenged by complaining customers! Continue reading How To Handle Customer Complaints in Four Easy Steps »
I was one of the first in my neighborhood to get Netflix. It was so civilized! Select the movies you wanted and they arrived in the mail! I would get an e-mail saying which movie just shipped and when I could expect it.
It was all easy, simple, and drama-free. Continue reading Silence is Golden! The Customer Service Debacle of Netflix »
It was a story out of some reality show which I initially dismissed…and then found all the links to the story… I now call it the Paris Hiltonization of retail…
Woman goes to shop in store with friends. Gets inappropriate help from clerk that is seen as pushy and argumentative. Customer complains in email. Company responds rudely. Social media flares up and company takes down their own Facebook page. Company confirms details and Twitter is ablaze.
The Scoop
According to the Melbourne Weekly, “Keara O’Neil Continue reading Should Retailers Care About #Gaspfail in Australia? Yes »
We’ve settled for too long in this country.
Settled as customers to accept inferior customer service.
Settled for employees who couldn’t give a damn about our business.
Settled for products that are just rehashes of other products – made on the cheap for a price point.
We kid ourselves into making an excuse, “You can’t find a good (name of widget) anymore when we chose one for $20 and avoided the one for forty. We make the excuse, “Good help is so hard to find and she’s the only one who I could get.” And the worst, we accept poor service as the norm and make the excuse to ourselves, “It doesn’t matter.”
We’ve got to stop settling because it breeds more of the same!
All this settling has allowed us the luxury to settle for despair. I mean, here we are in the 21st century being told that the worst is still ahead for kids, states, pensioners, unions, taxpayers, governments, stocks, neighborhoods, you name. Almost as if to make us lose hope. And many have.
But if you are in business, you don’t have the luxury of a disparaging thought.
Why are we settling?
Because we’ve forgotten what got us here. Innovation, hard work, drive.
The cause of lousy customer service starts well before we meet the bored employee.
Why are employees bored and allowed to still work? Because we as leaders aren’t excited enough to lead. We’ve settled into routine and settled for third or fourth best when the best is out there.
Why are so many customers and employees’ lives boring? Because we love to whine and feel bad?
No, I think human beings are innately drawn to the positive. But when they are surrounded by hopelessness they begin to think that hopelessness, fear and being anxious are the norm. They settle.
It’s like Superman believing he’s Clark Kent, Spiderman believing he’s Peter Parker, or Susan Boyle believing she could never sing.
It’s up to you readers to demand more. Of the stores we shop in. Of the employees we hire. Of the products we purchase.
But that all starts with demanding more of ourselves. Your employees are desperately hoping someone will lead them to a better way. If you are challenged how to do that, bring me in and let’s get going. Life is too short to settle.
Please comment below how you’ve settled or how you aren’t going to anymore.
I’m a child of the sixties.
I was fascinated every week by the Apollo pictures in the oversize Life magazine. I watched the death tolls at the end of every CBS Evening News with the man who represented unbiased reporting, Walter Cronkite.
I saw the Beatles premiere on Ed Sullivan. The day John Kennedy was assassinated – when my mom invited the Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman to come in and watch the TV coverage. The riots in LA, Detroit and the rest after MLK was murdered. The summer of love. Anti-war demonstrations. Woodstock. Kent State. The moon landing.
We baby boomers grew up on a steady diet of black and white commercials that included these questions:
People really did believe that Sears had the best Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools. Levi’s held up better than the rest and Keds sneakers allowed you to go farther. It’s back when brands meant something.
It’s back when a box fan was made in America to last, not to meet a $20 price point.
Since there was no Internet, it was when we delivered the day-old news on our Schwinn bikes around the neighborhood.
When my mom shopped for fabric and McCall’s dress patterns. When my dad was the gardener using Scott’s Turf Builder.
Again, it was back when brands meant something.
Baby Boomers were the generation who built Procter & Gamble, Best Foods, Unilever, Macy’s and the rest. And we are still hard-wired to want to see shopping in those terms because we are the generation driving the retail engine.
Spending by the 116 million U.S. consumers age 50 and older was $2.9 trillion last year — up 45% in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, the 182 million people younger than 50 spent $3.3 trillion last year — up just 6% during the same decade, according to an analysis for USA TODAY of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by The Boomer Project.
Photo by Kim Stiglitz verticalResponse
Nowadays CMOs have abandoned the very foundations of a brand. Twitter is filled with stories about how marketers are paying people to “like” them on Facebook and getting tablet computers into employees hands.
But nothing prepared me for this pathetic example at left provided by Kim Stiglitz at VerticalResponse of GAP paying for people to just say they provided a 10 on their experience – to receive a 20% off coupon!
With all the talk about “transparency” when dealing with the younger generation, GAP is demonstrating they don’t really care about your experience, just lie and get your 20% off.
What an insult to such a once-great retail brand (coincidentally started in the sixties) now reduced to a click to receive yet another discount coupon.
They aren’t asking for what you really think or value, just kidding themselves people really believe this stuff bullshit.
Branding, it was how Boomers were made into the powerhouse shoppers we still are today.
The Retail Generation Gap – Why Premium Brands are Stuck, my new free special report for retailers, can show you that this new generation is being taught its more about appreciating clicking “like” than purchasing premium brands. I show you the disconnect quickly and easily and ways to get them past that. Snag your copy now, before your competitors do.
