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How To Handle DifficultCustomers And Complaints
It’s a simple fact of life. If you’re in business, you’re bound to run into a difficult or unsatisfiedcustomer from time to time. You have to be prepared for these circumstances before they occur sothat the situation won’t cause you undue stress.In a perfect world, everyone you encountered would be kind, generous, and polite. Life doesn’twork that way. In business, you’ll run into customers who reconfirm the good in mankind and thosewho make you think they’re the spawn of Satan.That’s not to say that every customer who has a complaint is a bad person – or even a bad customer.Some complaints are valid, and you actually need to hear these in order to boost your business tothe level of success that you want to project.When you’re working with an online environment, you tend to have even harsher complaints because customers don’t have to face you – they’re hiding behind a computer screen. Thus, makingit easier for the customer to say things they wouldn’t normally say to someone in person.
Know What Your Customer Values
Before you can curb customer complaints, you have to know what your customers value. If youdon’t understand that, then you won’t know what’s wrong with your product, service, or membership site when the complaints start rolling in.For example, you can have a great system to
make money online
, but if your system is confusingor too complicated, then you’ll have people griping about it. Customers value simplicity and their time. They don’t want to waste hour upon hour trying to figure out what you mean.If you run a membership site and find people canceling on a regular basis, then you need to nip it inthe bud early on before the reputation of the site is damaged. What’s causing them to unsubscribe?Maybe you’re not delivering on your promises. If you promised frequent updates and you’re too busy to check in and upload new information to your site, then you’re letting your members down.
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Perhaps you launched an information product like an eBook, and ClickBank contacts you to let youknow your refund rate is excessive. You might initially think everyone’s out to scam you – gettingfreebies by being serial refund requestors.But stop to realize that most people are good people, and honest to boot. If your refund request ishigh, there’s something wrong with your end of the deal. Are you offering an advanced product butit only contains information 101 for beginners?Most website owners offer a “no questions asked” guarantee, which is a good way to make thecustomer feel at ease before they buy. But you will want to provide a way (message board, chatforum or email - to name a few) for them to suggest how you could improve your product.Some customers are complainers in everything they do in life. They complain about the weather,traffic, their jobs, relationships, and of course – everything they buy. Recognize that sometimes, it’snot you – it’s them.
Have a Good Reaction or Response Time
Some customers will contact you prior to asking for a refund. You should value these people because they’re seeking a viable solution, not just a freebie. They want to see if you’ll make it right.This isn’t always possible. Sometimes they’ll want something you can’t deliver. As long as you goabout it in a positive manner, you’ll come out looking professional and won’t damage your businessreputation. When a customer emails or phones you and has an issue with whatever it is that youoffer, make sure you reply in a timely manner. There’s nothing that will make a situation worse thanif someone has a complaint and no one will listen.Always try to get back to the person within 24 hours at the very least. Never let it go a week. Theentire time you ignore them, they’re fuming and their dissatisfaction is escalating.In the meantime, they may be planting seeds all over the ‘net asking others if they’ve had the same problem, which can hurt your business. At the very least, have an autoresponder in place toacknowledge receipt of their email and let them know when they should expect to hear back fromyou.
Try to Rectify the Situation
This is where you have to be careful – making the situation better. How far do you go? There arelimits. Think about the offline business world first. Different companies take a different approach.Some stores will give you an in-store credit only instead of a refund; some have a 15 day return policy. Others will take merchandise back that isn’t even theirs, has no tags, and looks used. Online,you’ll need to have some guarantees set in place for you. For instance, ClickBank and PayPal havetheir own customer protection plans, and you have no say over that.It’s okay if a customer emails and tells you what they’re not happy with and you reply with an offer to fix the situation if you can. For instance, if the customer thought your product would include a
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section on AdSense revenue, but it didn’t, you can send them a free bonus of a special report youdevelop on that topic or a viral freebie that’s offered online.
Know When to Stop Trying
You may get angry emails from someone who’s on your autoresponder list and even though theyopted into your list, they’re lashing out at you. This happened to one ‘net marketer recently.Instead of simply un-subscribing him after he called her an unsavory name, she sent him another email apologizing to him and even gave him a free eBook – one that regularly sells for $67, not aviral freebie.Should she have gone the extra mile to cater to this individual? No. When someone opts into your list, you’ll inevitably have people forget they did it and want to unsubscribe immediately.That’s perfectly acceptable. But when they call you curse names and report your email as spam after they opted in, it’s time to cut your losses and be glad to be rid of them.In this case, the ‘net marketer was reinforcing this customer’s bad behavior. He will treat others thesame way, knowing that some of them will bow down to his negative attitude and give him freestuff just for being rude. She rewarded him. Not only that, but what is this ‘net marketer doing to reward her “good customers”? They getnothing. The rude customer got an entire free eBook worth $67. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?You have to have thick skin to be a businessperson. It doesn’t matter if it’s online or offline becausethere are times when you’re going to run into rude customers and comments that don’t make sense,along with legitimate complaints.
How Bad Customers Can Be Good for Your Business
There are many websites out there with copy that’s just too good. This means they’re so compellingthat the reader gets swept up in their emotions and makes impulse buys, only to regret it later.Then there is copy that oversells the benefits of the product, which lets the buyer down because theywere so hyped up by the sales letter that the actual product couldn’t do it justice.Bad customers will let you know if this is the problem. They’ll say, “You promised such-and-suchand then didn’t deliver!”. At this point you have two choices – you can add the missing element toyour product, or revise your sales letter so that you’re not promising something you don’t deliver.Don’t argue with a customer about why he or she was unhappy. Listen as if their complaint is valid,even if you disagree. You want to diffuse the situation and get out of it as fast as possible. Not everyone will want a refund or a freebie to rectify the situation. Some of them just want their 
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