9 Tips For Dealing With Unhappy Customers

Mistakes happen.

We would love to sit here and tell you we do everything perfectly all the time, but that’s just not reality. No one does. If we make a mistake, we own up to it and fix it, period. We know that our members are happy when their customers are happy. If we are to blame for an issue, we reship and replace the item ASAP. Take at look at our stats from January below.

Printaura’s Stats For January 2016

Stocking

99.44% of orders were fulfilled with no stock issues.

Quality

99.3% of our orders were fulfilled with no quality issues. Printaura corrected the entire 0.7% of orders with issues to our members satisfaction.

Unhappy Customer?

While we do our absolute best to provide quality products and take care of any issues that arise as soon as possile, there are always customers who are just unhappy. We are sure you’ve dealt with them before. They were sent exactly what they ordered, but still aren’t happy.

So, what do you do?

9 Tips For Dealing With Unhappy Customers

Customer service is important to us, and it should be important to you too! When you have a reputation for great customer service, potential customers will feel safer buying from you. There is less risk involved when purchasing from a brand with a good reputation for fixing issues in a timely and fair way. Here are some tips to help you deal with unhappy customers while maintaining a good customer service reputation.

1. Breathe

It’s extremely hard to remain calm and collected if someone is yelling at you or being unreasonable. You may feel attacked or like you need to react or defend yourself. Don’t. This will only add fuel to the fire. Two people yelling is never better than one. Try to stay calm and listen as best you can. Not everyone has the composure to address problems in a reasonable way. Make sure you are one of those people, even if the upset customer is not.

2. Don’t Take It Personally

Sometimes it can be difficult to not take these things personally. It usually feels like the unhappy customer is unhappy with you, and you alone. In reality, they are just unhappy with experience and need someone to talk to about it. Just remember, it has nothing to do with you, it has to do with their experience.

3. Give A Timely Response

This person is upset or unhappy and seeking a solution to their problem. They want to feel heard. They want to feel important to you. It is very important to respond within a day or two of receiving a complaint. The sooner the better. This can also give you a chance to remedy the situation before they take to social media to air out their issues.

4. Listen & Make Them Feel Heard

Again, an unhappy customer just wants to feel heard. They want to express their trouble with the end goal of feeling consoled or remedied about their inconvenience or problem with the product. They want someone to listen to their problem, and care about them enough to try to fix it.

When you listen and care, they feel like your brand cares. This will start changing their bad experience into a more positive one. Have you ever called into somewhere absolutely furious about a situation you've been put in, only to be met with a very caring, helpful, and positive person on the other end? It sure makes it harder to continue to feel upset.

5. Apologize

Say you’re sorry. Even if it isn’t your fault, don’t place the blame on the customer and don’t make up excuses. Just take full responsibility and move on to finding a solution. Being defensive and trying to prove your unhappy customer wrong won't do you any good. You have to look at this step as simple semantics. See it as a jumping off point to moving towards a solution.

7. Find A Solution

Work with the customer to find a solution that works for both of you. You don’t need to agree to anything unreasonable here. Just find a middle ground where everyone walks away from the conversation feeling better. Maybe you give them a $5 off coupon for their inconvenience. Maybe you feel it’s right to replace an item. Whatever it may be, finding a solution is your goal here.

8. Learn From The Situation

How can you prevent this issue from happening again? Think about the events lead up to the issue, and what you can change in the process to prevent this issue occurring again. Are there measures you need to take to protect yourself from ending up in this position again? Identify the problems and work out a plan to address them.

9. Know When To Give Up

Unfortunately, you can't win all unhappy customers over with great customer service. We have dealt with a few of these here. You do everything you can to work with them and to remedy the situation, but they just don’t care. They just want to keep complaining and trashing you and your company. This is when you just need to throw in the towel and stop wasting your time. If they left you a bad review, it stinks, but it’s just the way it is. Time to pick yourself up, and move on.

Example Situation

Customer Orders Incorrect Size

Problem: Customer orders a medium, but it is too small. They claim your products run smaller than others. They also note that since you do not have a sizing chart available, the incorrect size choice is your fault.

Your Action:  Take a deep breath and apologize (even if you feel it’s not your fault). Make them feel heard. Sympathize with them and offer to correct the root of issue (adding a sizing chart) so that the same problem does not occur again. In order to remedy their current situation, you can offer a replacement item in the correct size if you feel this is the right action. We can help you with this! If you are not willing to replace the product, apologize and offer the customer something of value to compensate them from their inconvenience. It could be something as simple as  a coupon towards their next order.

Essentially:

• Remain Calm
• Listen
• Sympathize
• Apologize
• Offer A Solution
 

Learn From It: To prevent this from happening again, you can make a very clear and accurate sizing chart. Having a sizing chart can help customers order the correct size the first time around, avoiding situations like this. If someone does order an incorrect size after reviewing the sizing chart, they are more likely to place them blame on themselves for the mistake. It is harder to fight with someone when you know you are at fault.