A Great Way To Lose Customers!

A great way to lose customers is to make them tell you when something is wrong. That makes them wonder if they should try your competition-a condition you never want to occur.

An example we can all relate to is in a hotel. The problem with most hotels is no one “owns” the customer after the check-in. The front desk owns the customer while he is checking in, but afterwards no one seems to be responsible to be sure the guest is having an “I will use this hotel again and recommend it to my friends” experience.

Case in point: I was at a hotel recently when I had a leaking pipe in my room. So I called the front desk because I believe it owns the customer. The front desk told me they would notify maintenance-and they probably did. But an hour later the pipe was still leaking and still no maintenance. So I called the front desk again. They told me they had called maintenance before and would call them again. The front desk saw this as a maintenance problem. It was not. It was a customer experience problem, and in a hotel, the front desk should own it. All the front desk did that day was shift the problem to maintenance. And then they figured they had done their job and they were done. They weren’t.

The front desk should have asked maintenance for an estimate when they would arrive at my room to fix the problem. Then the front desk should have called me and gave me that estimate. And when the estimated time arrived, the front desk should have called me to see if maintenance had arrived. That is owning the customer. None of that happened. I had to call the front desk to tell them maintenance didn’t show up.

How often do your customers have to tell you when something is wrong with your product or service? I would bet every time. Do you think I was irritated because I had to call the front desk to tell them maintenance didn’t show up? You bet. Do you think your customers are irritated when they have to tell you your product didn’t work? You bet.

Who “owns” the customer experience in your company after the sale? Does anyone? Most companies think they are done after the sale unless they get a complaint. And they may be pretty good at fixing the problem (delivery, quality, wrong size, or whatever), but by then it is too late. The seeds of discontent have been sown.

The point is this: You should build in checkpoints along the post-sale process to proactively determine if the customer experience was excellent or not-and intervene to solve any problems before the customer complains. Don’t make them call you because by then the seeds of discontent have been sown- first because something isn’t right-and second because they had to take the time to call and tell you about it.

After the sale notify the customer when to expect delivery (Amazon does a great job at this) and a method for tracking the shipment. After the shipment date, ask the customer if they were satisfied with the purchase (this can be automated). And of course if it wasn’t, make it right promptly and then ask them again if you have fixed the problem to their satisfaction.

I know what you are saying. “My sales person owns the customer” The problem with that approach is most sales people are more interested in making the next sale than the care and feeding of the last one.. You’re probably better off letting your sales people sell and building in an automatic process to track the post-sale activity.

Always remember this: Beware the seeds of discontent. It’s a great way to lose customers.