I suffered some pretty poor service when I returned to JEM Ltd to have the faulty valve fixed. I won’t go into details but here are what I think are ways of offering good customer service:

Apologise

Whether or not a customer’s complaint is valid and even not your fault. Just say sorry and try to understand where the customer is coming from. At rather then just being told “We’re really sorry, we’ll do our best to help.” they tried to wriggle out of having anything to do with the problem. Although a short term win for them, I’ll never be returning and will be making sure I make it known to anyone I can to never go there. Any short term loss involved with rectifying my problem would be repaid through repeat business and word of mouth about the quality of service. Washing your hands of a customer’s problems is not a recipe for success.

Listen

When a customer is angry, don’t point it out, you’ll only make them more angry. Saying things like “Before you get angry” or “If you’ll just calm down” will only infuriate them more. I’m not normally one to get angry and wasn’t at the time, but wow, did this push me over the edge. People get angry when they fell like they aren’t being listened to. Shouting is a way of making yourself heard. So if a customer is shouting at you, double your efforts to listen to them. As corny as it is, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.