Lessons learned from poor customer service
By Kirsten Snyder - Director, Integrated Insight
We all have stories about terrible customer service. Some industries, such as the airline
industry, have a notoriously bad customer service reputation. My experience was with a company in another
dreaded industry...home warranties. Generally,
when something goes wrong with either my flight or my refrigerator, I have the
same feeling of dread, expecting a terribly painful ordeal. I recently had an awful experience with our
home warranty company, but it didn’t have to be that way. If the company had focused on only three
things, it could have made the experience better.
Treat me like a
valued customer. Our home warranty
company simply passed me off to a contractor who was supposed to solve my
problem. This is the typical process but
unfortunately, they don’t follow up to make sure everything is going
smoothly. I am the home warranty
company’s customer, but they don’t treat me that way. They act like a broker rather than an
advocate, which doesn’t make me feel like they value my business, and leads to
my next point.
Proactively communicate
with me. After the initial meeting
with the contractor, I went to the home warranty company to help expedite the
process. However, their solution was to continue
to deal directly with the contractor, who kept telling me the part would be
arriving in the “next shipment.” After
four weeks of no results from the contractor, my husband sent out a frustrated
tweet. The negative press caught the attention
of the home warranty company, who promptly called. This was the first communication I received
from the home warranty company since my initial claim. Had the home warranty company actually been
involved in my claim, communicating with me and the contractor, we wouldn’t
have resorted to taking our frustrations to Twitter. The communication doesn’t have to immediately
solve the problem, but even an email or phone call that says they are
monitoring the claim, would have been a huge improvement, making me feel like a
valued customer.
Give employees the
tools to solve problems and encourage them to do so. When the tweet prompted a phone call from the
home warranty company after a month of radio silence, I was optimistic that
they were finally going to advocate for my situation. Unfortunately, the phone call began with, “Hi.
You recently posted something very negative on Twitter and I am calling
to explain the situation.” The
representative proceeded to tell me what I already knew – the contractor had
still not received the part. She
offered no solution to my problem, wasn’t prepared to offer a solution, and did
it seem like she had any authority to do so.
Her job was to call and defend the home warranty company and prevent
another “negative” tweet to my husband’s 130,000 followers.
If you have the staff to monitor and engage in social media,
then use the opportunity to make the situation better. Yes, people want to understand what’s
happening, but most of the time what they really want is a solution. In my case, I was well aware of the
situation. We took our problem to Twitter
because neither the contractor nor our home warranty company was solving our
problem. We figured my husband’s large Twitter
following would encourage the home warranty company to do something. I
wanted to hear, “We understand you have
had a difficult and frustrating experience.
We have found a new contractor who has the part in stock and will be out
tomorrow to install it. I am so sorry for any inconvenience.”
Communicating can go a long way in making customers feel
valued in addition to turning a bad situation into a positive experience.
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