5 More Lessons Learned-The Saga Continues

The BBQ Saga Continues

Remember last week I wrote about the importance of knowing your customers, to find ways to do what previously couldn’t be done and to “find your special because, as Seth Godin said, “Every interaction is both precious and an opportunity to delight?”

Well, the saga continues.

My husband decided to forward my writing with notes of his own to the company that provided us with the “learning experiences.” Here’s what happened:

1.       Received emails from the BBQ company from two different people. Both said, “We’re sorry and we’ll look into it.” I politely informed them they were duplicating efforts. One responded with a cold “closed ticket” form email. Kind of impersonal and slightly disorganized but let’s move on.

2.       The next email subject line was “Customer Complaint!” What are these people thinking? How negative can you get?!

3.       Opened email to find the subject line was established not by the sender but from an internal communication referring to us as “Ticket 42545 Severity Medium” and the sender attached her comments to the email and sent it on to us. Again, what are these people thinking?  Next-

4.       The original message sent to the Store Director says we complained about an “inattentive sales associate who gave negative responses.”  I guess one could summarize the experience that way but how about “the sales associate blew an opportunity to delight us and allowed us to walk away without much effort to save the sale and the relationship.” They completely missed the point.

5.       The note to us from the Store Director referred to us as “Sir”. They have our names – “Sir” is a bit cold, yes? She did apologize for the service we received and said she wanted to talk with us further. OK – how about calling us? What do you want to know? Maybe how we think the situation should have been handled? What’s our suggestion to make us happy? Nothing in her email suggests she even wants us as a customer.

6.       Next, she asked for the name of the sales associate to “help in further training and coaching of her sales team.” We don’t care about your training and coaching. What about us? What about our experience with your company? HELLO? Anybody out there?? This isn’t about you, it’s about us!

 5  MORE Lessons Learned

1.  WE CARE ABOUT OURSELVES! We need to feel wanted, needed and pleased. What you do internally (your “ticket” systems, training, etc) is your issue. We don’t care and don’t want to be bogged down with your details.
2. TREAT EVERY COMPLAINT LIKE GOLD! It is an opportunity to delight and win back our confidence. It opens the closed door to your reality. You learn more from your “failures” every time.
3. WE ONLY TAKE THE TIME TO COMPLAIN WHEN, DEEP DOWN, WE WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU! We were disappointed by you. To be disappointed means we had to want something we didn’t get. You had a chance, we wanted to do business with you, and you blew it! We would not take the time to let you know about our experience if we didn’t want to do business with you.
4. IF YOUR CULTURE DOES NOT WELCOME COMPLAINTS FROM US (or, for that matter, your employees) YOU ARE IN TROUBLE! When culture, policies and customer delight are in tune it is easy. When they are not and someone speaks up it is opportunity and must be treasured!
5. WELCOME POSITIVE DISRUPTERS! They provide the highest form of loyalty a company or employer can receive. Their passion is your key to growth and survival.

   Please tell us – how would you have responded to our passion? WE ALL WANT TO KNOW.