Further on Customer Support

One of the highly irritating things that most customer support representatives tend to do is try to convince you that you are wrong. For example: I purchase a roasted turkey sandwich from a restaurant and I get it smoked and when I complain they try to convince me that it is roasted not smoked!!! (bas 2ana ely mesh wakhda baly!!!!!!!!!) . I ordered once a Toffee tart and they got me fruit tart instead and the waiter kept trying to convince me that it is the Toffee tart.

When you call your DSL customer support to complain that the speed of your connection is too slow, you get the frustrating answer: “No it is not…it is perfectly well”. Or they try to convince you that you did something wrong on your side or you have a virus that is causing this speed issue, without even trying to troubleshoot with you.

NEVER try to convince your customer that he is wrong or that he does not understand. If your customer is complaining try to resolve the issue. Try to know what is bothering him and solve the problem. Even if the customer is really confused or complaining of something that you know 100% is not right, do not tell him straight away that he is wrong. Keep doing some troubleshooting steps with him and take it step by step to make him feel that you are helping him resolve the issue and then in the end convince him in an intelligent way that there is no problem. He will appreciate it and might even apologize. But the main point is you never tell your customer that he is wrong. Do not ever frustrate your customer by telling him that he does not understand or that he is complaining of something that does not exist. After all it is your job as a customer representative to make the customer happy.

Also admitting your mistake, fixing it and apologizing for it (you might even need to make up for it by giving something extra or for free) is much much much better than denying it. Sometimes you complain from something and all you get is denial and then you find out that it has been fixed. This is more annoying than admitting the problem because you feel that that the company does not respect you. They are willing to lie and they underestimate you to the extent that they think you will not understand what they did.

Such issues relate also to bad management. If the customer support department is managed by a competent manager, such mistakes will never occur. A good manager will know how to monitor the performance of his employees and control their behavior and attitudes. A good manager will set the rules from the beginning and will tell his employees how to handle all types of customers.

The link below is an interesting article that talks about the same issue...Importance of customer service:
http://buzz.greatfxbusinesscards.com/what-ever-happened-to-customer-service.htm