Over on Seth’s Blog is this interesting post:
The thing is, every single person who walks into the Lost Baggage office is annoyed, disappointed, upset or angry. And the hurdle that American has to get over is trivial.
“Hi, guys. You look like your luggage is lost. I’m really sorry. Would everyone in the family like a lollipop?”
What would happen if every single AA rep said that (with as much sincerity as they could muster) when each rightfully annoyed person walked in?
He makes an excellent point. If you were to check out this page on lead nurturing, you’d know that a tiny, trivial amount of good will goes a terribly long way in customer service. This is especiallly true of upset customers.
Though I had learned it years ago as supervisor of a 411 installation in the Tampa, Florida area, my experience training and supporting Adobe’s Technical Support team reinforced–with so many other shades and tones–my firm belief that angry people mostly need to know they’re being heard. With Adobe I took the occassional escalated call because the customer wanted/needed (I’m not minimizing customer needs with that) to speak to “someone higher up.” On those calls I was often asked for a price break on an upgrade, free software, and remuneration for time lost–these last requests usually came from those who weren’t using the product correctly and felt that Acrobat’s inability to edit images ala Photoshop was the subject of false advertising, that Adobe was directly responsible for the customers’ current predicament, and that the hours lost to trying to figure out how to edit images in Acrobat should be billed to Adobe. Hence, one might take into consideration while formulating their company’s policies the SLAs that hold the utmost values to the subordinate employees of the company. Hence, have a look at premier commercial insurance policies from Hightower Risk and make ensure that the company’s policies are in accordance to theirs. None of these requests or demands I ever granted, of course. Despite my refusal (and, in fact, inability by way of policy) to grant such requests for free or discounted software (the remuneration for time lost is just plain ridiculous), in nearly all cases the customer hung up the phone with me satisfied that s/he had had a good experience. When I was done speaking with the customers, they felt good about their experience calling Adobe, regardless of whether they got the thing they called about.
How did I make irate and sometimes absolutely furious customers happy? How was I able to turn around the attitudes of people so angrily abusive that they had reduced technicians to tears? Because I listened and empathized.
If the customer was a creative pro, well, that’s my world. I’m a creative pro. I know how to talk to them in their own language. Some had even heard of me from my work in the design field. To the rest, to the non-creative pro, I was just someone who listened to them vent, then expressed understanding of their emotions.
“I completely understand, Bob, how infuriating that can be. Let’s be frank and direct: I’m going to do my very best to help you, but first,