The Customer Service Survival Kit

The Customer Service Survival Kit, What to Say to Defuse Even the Worst Customer Situations, by Richard S. Gallagher, Amacom, 2013

You’ve been on hold waiting for Lily Tomlin’s Geraldine to finish primping her hair and pick up the damn phone at her Customer Service desk.  And when she finally does, she’s speaking to you from another continent in the middle of a cavernous call center – the white noise cuts through your explanation of the problem:

Good afternoon, this is Big Phone Corp.  What can we do for you today ha ha?

Well, I got my new iPhone two weeks ago….

Let me start again, there seem to be other conversations going on here…

I got my new iPhone and the headset they shipped with it is the wrong one…

I see.  Let me call up your record… the computers are slow today...  Can you repeat your problem please.

I got a headset that doesn’t fit…

Well did you know you can go on line and print your own return label, without me, and send it back?

Yes, your system says the phone is beyond the return limit.  But I’m not trying to return the phone…. It’s the headset…

Well, just a moment while I call up your record.

Just a moment…. Just a moment… just a …..

          Is this what Big Phone Corp calls customer service?  Everyone can fall into that customer service pit, but when angry customers start to fight back and hurl threats after insults to complain to the AG, or at least an eager attorney, author Richard Gallagher recommends that you be prepared – have the right answers and the right counter-measures prepped and ready to go because customers have considerable power in the social media marketplace to hurt not just a corporation reputation, but profits and market share as well.

“You need to be prepared to look at your worst customer situations… and be willing to put these techniques to work.  They take practice…. Your worst customers can become the best friends your service career ever had.”  Really?  That good?

Gallagher offers these proven methods for dealing with customer disasters:

·         Tamp down flare-ups by “leaning into” a customer’s criticism

·        Acknowledge a customer’s outrage – validate and respect their viewpoint

·        Soften the blow of bad news by delivering it in stages:  a good introduction, a proactive solution-focused summary; and an empathetic response to the customer’s reactions.

·        Avoid trigger phrases that stoke a customer’s outrage, including “You’ll have to…” and “You should have…”

·        Tell a customer he is wrong in a perfectly safe, non-inflammatory way, and earn genuine forgiveness for mistakes

·        Lead with what you can do for the customer, rather than what you can’t, and work toward solving a customer’s problem by following four simple steps.

Gallagher illustrates all of his recommendations with timely, to-the-point illustrations from the real world.  My favorite, “The Concert that never was” sounded too familiar.  A woman named Julie and her best friend won two tickets to the biggest concert of her life, a night with her favorite band.  She and her buddy set out early for the venue, so excited about their trip that they posted Twitter updates all along the interstate.  Except that when the girls arrived, no one would let them in, despite pleas and explanations – when they asked to speak with a manager, he threatened to have them both arrested for forging their tickets!  Can you imagine a worse customer “service” disaster?

The next morning, however, Julia appeared on a national morning TV show describing her experience and how she and her friend were treated.  Her story went viral.  As the PR professional tasked with cleaning up the mess what would you do?

What does Richard Gallagher advise?  Talk to the customers, really listen to their story, no interruptions.  Next, do Creative Service Recovery – this is my favorite.  Imagine what would make Julia most happy after this awful experience?  A pair of tickets to another concert?  No.  An apology from the rude manager?  No, who cares at this point?  HOW ABOUT GOING ON TOUR WITH THE ROLLING STONES AND DINNER WITH KEITH RICHARD?  Now that, says the customer, is more like it. 

And so what Gallagher advises through his case studies, is over-the-top disaster recovery, just what he prescribed for Julia, because he recognizes the power of an angry customer on social media, and the potential for turning a PR nightmare into sympathetic new customer conversion.