Don't Make Your Customers Get Defensive

This week’s mar­ket­ing tip is a no brain­er to most of us, but unfor­tu­nate­ly many busi­ness­es over­look this prin­ci­ple.

Mar­ket­ing Prin­ci­ple: Nev­er make your cus­tomer feel uncom­fort­able when a prob­lem sur­faces. If you are at fault, do what it takes to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty. If the cus­tomer is at fault, don’t let them get defen­sive. Cre­ate a win-win out­come.

Relat­ed To Marketing? How does this relate to mar­ket­ing, one might ask? Every­thing you do in your busi­ness, good and bad, is mar­ket­ing. The way you answer the phone, your voice­mail greet­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, the appear­ance of your employ­ees, it sends a mes­sage to the con­sumer: hope­ful­ly a pos­i­tive one!  My Per­son­al Story The prin­ci­ple I men­tioned above is rela­vant to me this week because I had a sit­u­a­tion (still going on) with a ser­vice con­trac­tor that made me get a lit­tle defen­sive and feel like the bad guy. I won’t men­tion their names (yet) because they are still in the mid­dle of try­ing to work on my sit­u­a­tion. A long sto­ry short, this com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed a ser­vice to my home which unfor­tu­nate­ly caused a small leak in a pipe that was not ful­ly shut off for sev­er­al hours. An hon­est mis­take and and an easy fix once dis­cov­ered. It dam­aged my ceil­ing tiles in my fin­ished base­ment in the 4 hours the leak took place. I’ve had lots of expe­ri­ence deal­ing with ceil­ing leaks (being in the paint­ing busi­ness) so I knew the water stains were NOT going away. I con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny who apol­o­gized, came back out, fixed the pipe so it would not hap­pen again and then said, ​“Call us in a few days once things dry out and see if every­thing looks ok.” I thought to myself, ​“Sev­er­al tiles are brown and still soak­ing wet…and that is sup­posed to van­ish in 3 days?” I knew right there that this employ­ee was not tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty. I’m a nice guy and respond­ed pleas­ant­ly, ​“Ok I can do that. BUT those ceil­ing tiles are soaked to the bone and are stained! I don’t think that is going away. What can you do about it?” His response, ​“Yeah you are prob­a­bly right. But go ahead and call us in a few days and see how things are look­ing.” He then took a few pic­tures and went away. Hear­ing noth­ing from the staff, I made a call 4 days lat­er to fol­low up. The sales per­son who sold me the water sys­tem called me back the next day. He was very pro­fes­sion­al on the phone yet still lacked the mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple in this post. Even though he was sor­ry and being pos­i­tive, he put too much pres­sure on me and won­der­ing what I want­ed to do about the sit­u­a­tion. What he should have done is sim­ply said, ​“Dave, I’m sor­ry about your tiles. We’ll take care of this and don’t you wor­ry about a thing.” If he said that, I would have backed down and not got­ten defen­sive. Yet I’m still wait­ing for a call back and a solu­tion that will hope­ful­ly not make me look like I’m the one who caused the leak. The Lit­tle Things Matter It is pos­si­ble to have a few bad apple cus­tomers from time to time. Things hap­pen! Yet it is how you deal with those cus­tomers that will deter­mine if they will be back in the future or be cus­tomers for life. Yes, maybe there hap­pen to be cus­tomers you’d rather not want back. If that is the case, the lit­tle things still mat­ter. Fol­low the prin­ci­ple above and make sure even the tough cus­tomers don’t get defen­sive at the end of a project. You might keep a few from telling their friends or writ­ing nasty reviews online, because you’ve done the right thing. I’ve seem my own father fol­low this prin­ci­ple numer­ous times and he rarely ever has cus­tomers who walk away upset. He has even returned mon­ey to frus­trat­ed cus­tomers (even when it is the cus­tomers fault!). What do you do to keep cus­tomers com­fort­able with your ser­vice? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.