Make Customers Feel Comfortable

This tip, Make Cus­tomers Feel Com­fort­able, might be a no-brain­er for many of you read­ing this blog. How­ev­er, I am sur­prised at how often employ­ees of home improve­ment com­pa­nies can get cus­tomers into some awk­ward moments.

Let me give you a real-life exam­ple that hap­pened this week.

My Exam­ple

A few days ago, we had solar pan­els installed on my home. The com­pa­ny that installed them had well-brand­ed vehi­cles. They mar­ket their ser­vices heav­i­ly in my area, so they have an image to main­tain. As the crews arrived and began set­ting up, they decid­ed to turn on their music so all could hear. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but it is prob­a­bly best to think about ear­buds these days and keep­ing music qui­et or silent. I know some­times hav­ing a head­set on could also vio­late some safe­ty laws too. Yet, play­ing music was not the big issue here. It was the type of music they turned on. I was get­ting ready to head out the door for work, and my wife came inside to tell me that the music the crew was lis­ten­ing to was over-the-top sex­u­al­ly explicit.

Here is the awk­ward moment for me, the home­own­er. I did not real­ly want to tell the crews to turn down their music. I was will­ing to do that, but I thought the sales guy should know what was going on and deal with it. So I con­tact­ed him first. As a good sales guy would do, he was apolo­getic and said, ​“They know bet­ter than that!” Here is where it got uncom­fort­able. He said he’d take care of it and then fol­lowed up with, ​“I can ask them to turn it down but only if you want me to.” Wait! What? He was will­ing to let them con­tin­ue to lis­ten to sex­u­al­ly explic­it music when I just com­plained about it? I was con­cerned about my kids and neigh­bors. My 11-year-old son also came inside and told me how bad the music was…as he heard just enough!

Why was it uncom­fort­able? The sales­per­son put me in a posi­tion where I had to choose what should be done. He want­ed me to make the deci­sion. I was leav­ing for the day and had con­cerns that we were off to a bad start crit­i­ciz­ing the crew for their loud and gross music. I did­n’t real­ly want to leave my wife home with 4 guys on my roof know­ing we just complained!

My response to the sales­per­son was sim­ply this, ​“That is your deci­sion. I’m just giv­ing you feed­back. You’ll have to fig­ure out how to han­dle it.” Obvi­ous­ly he did some­thing because the music stopped before I left for work.

Take­away

I think the take­away of this exam­ple again is obvi­ous, but maybe it is a reminder for you. You might want to check in with your field guys and make sure they are doing things accord­ing to your com­pa­ny stan­dards and guide­lines. Make sure you are con­stant­ly train­ing your staff to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and are nev­er putting your cus­tomer in a sit­u­a­tion that they feel stu­pid or defen­sive and so forth. Make the process pain­less and pos­i­tive from start to fin­ish. If there is an issue, make that cus­tomer feel con­fi­dent that your com­pa­ny will take care of it — no ques­tions asked!