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Customer Service, Retention and Damage Control
Filed Under (Marketing) by 
Brian Hawkins on 12-10-2008
These tough economic times demand that we do our due diligence more than ever before. I can’t think of an area where that is more true than in customer retention. Customer service, retention and damage control are necessary skills for every online business to master.
What do you do when your customers complain? Avoid becoming rude or dismissive at all costs. It’s sometimes hard to separate business and emotion but it is vital that we are always professional.
I used to work for a company that passed out these little stickers to all of the employees. These stickers were meant to go up in everyone’s work area and printed on them were, ‘The Customer Is Always Right‘. You’ve heard that saying before and you certainly know that it’s not always true. Companies use these old dried up sayings to remind their representatives that they do not have the authority to argue with the customer. They want employees to refer serious complaints to management rather than tell a customer that they are wrong.
This is a very important step in marketing - customer retention. Customer retention is one of the most important parts of marketing and it is also the most ignored. As online business owners we don’t have the luxury of referring an irate customer over to customer service management or the retention department. We are the only thing standing in the way of keeping that customer.
You Can’t Keep Them All
We’re not going to recover every customer that has had a bad experience and, truthfully, we don’t always want to. At the very least we want to control the potential damage an angry customer can cause. Yes, there can be damage. You don’t want them posting negative comments on blogs and forums. You certainly don’t want them launching a complaint on scam sites or even worse - the Better Business Bureau.
One of the easiest ways to get started on practical customer service and retention is by offering a very easy way for them to contact you. I use a central helpdesk for all of my sites just to simplify things a bit but a helpdesk is important. I use a free script from PHPJunkYard. By using a helpdesk you can be certain your messages aren’t being filtered out by whatever email service you use. The message is stored on your site and the alert emailed to you is by you.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Phone
I normally won’t buy a thing online if the site won’t provide a phone number. That doesn’t mean I want to call before I buy it just means I want that option should something go wrong. I have to assume there are a lot of people out there that feel the same way. I offer my cell phone number, email and a bunch of other methods of contact right on my HelpDesk Sure, some of the calls are a pain in the neck but it’s much easier to calm an frustrated customer down before they really get mad from spending a bunch of time trying to get in touch with you.
Make It Better
Work with the customer to solve the problem. Remember, future sales may depend on your reaction and you would expect no less if things were reversed. Listen to the problem or issue and do everything you can as fast as you can to fix it. If it is something that can not be immediately corrected then perhaps a refund or replacement offer is in order. Or a free upgrade or perhaps even a partial refund.
But They Can Get Very Irate
Customers can get pretty heated. As a quick example, I just received a HelpDesk ticket from a member of our Ad Tracking site. He has been a member for five months and just decided the service wasn’t for him. No problem, it’s a simple matter to cancel. He decided to let me have it with both barrels for whatever reason. He objected to our slogan, he said we were misleading and tracking impressions rather than clicks. This message caused me to write a post on our Tracker Blog but I made sure I was polite and respectful in the reply. Always reply if needed. Ignoring the problem can be damaging too. I do, however, have a firm rule that once someone has unsubscribed I never reply to that person. I don’t want spam issues by replying to someone that just needed to vent. They are already upset, don’t give them a weapon.
Another type of customer is the one that thinks you sit by the computer or phone and wait all day to be blessed with their questions and comments. I struggled long and hard against just deleting another member a little while back. This guy signed up and paid for a program that he had no idea what it was much less how to use it. He couldn’t even log in. He couldn’t understand anything about the service or what it was even for. I would get eight or ten messages a day from him asking mostly unrelated questions. He even called me on the phone wanting me to log into his email account and read a message he received from a spammer to see if it was a good deal. I didn’t, of course, and he forwarded it to me anyway. There is nothing wrong with being firm as long as you are respectful and somewhat courteous. I had to firmly explain that I was far to busy to deal with his unrelated issues and I even suggested that our service was probably a waste of his time and money. I truly believed that and he agreed. He didn’t even have anything to promote and something like an affiliate program would be way over his head for a while. I was never so happier to refund anyone’s money as I was that day. This guy was a challenge but I’m proud to say I remained professional throughout the entire ordeal.
It’s Business - Not Personal
The bottom line is that we need to separate our personal likes and feeling from tough business decisions. We must handle customer service and retention like our business depends on it - because it does.
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Wow, another inbox crammed full of e-mails for Mike Filsames’ latest mega launch Traffic Fusion. A great product I’m sure but, wow, can those promotions get overwhelming. It is very impressive to watch the master at work. Mike says ‘
