Simon Paul Thurston

The most important aspect of customer service is essentially to make sure that your customer walks away happy.  This doesn’t mean that you need to give up a great deal of your profit, or give away free gifts or enormous refunds.  For many people, there are more important things than money.  This holds true for customers just as it does for anyone else.

When customers make a purchase, they expect at least two of three things – quality, value, and service.

If you happen to provide excellent customer service and offer a high quality product at an excellent value – you’ve got all bases covered.   But if you’re ever having a difficult time of producting a quality product, or you happen to overprice your product so that the value is no longer there, you could end up with an unhappy customer.  And this is precisely when stellar customer service well save the day.

 Postive Customer Service

The moment you receive a complain from a customer – the key is to acknowledge the compain and agree that the customer is correct (even if they aren’t).  It doesn’t matter what the complaint is, simply acknowledge it in a positive way and agree that the issue is a very serious concern.

Now agreeing that the concern is serious is one thing – what you are going to do about it is quite another.

Who made the mistake?

If you’ve completely messed up your product or service, and the customer complaint is, without a doubt, completely legitimate – then by all means offer a full refund, and do it quickly.  The last thing you need is an irate customer telling friends and family what a terrible service or product you sell.  However, if you quickly make up for an error with a full refund and an apology – you may end up with a happy customer anyone, who will spread the word that you provide some of the best customer service he has ever seen.  It is always possible, in fact, to turn lemons into lemonade.

Not your fault?

We’ve all had to deal with them – customers who complain about every little detail in order to get a discount or a partial refund.  There are times when you must stand your ground and refuse – but you can do so using reverse psychology.

For example – let’s say you are selling on ebay and you’ve sold expensive silver flatware.  The customer purchases a full set at an amazing deal, and then writes to complain to you that one of the utencils is slightly tarnished.  You know that it wasn’t, or the tarnish is insignificant – but the customer is fishing for a partial refund, but wants to be able to keep the set.

The way out of a situation like this is simple – offer a full refund upon return of the entire set.  Since the customer realizes the value that they’ve already achieved in buying the item from you at such a great price, they aren’t going to want to give up the product.  You will likely never hear another word from them again.

 Whatever your tactic – just keep in mind that the ultimate success through customer service comes from a positive demeaner regardless of the situation, rapid response and communication, and a very quick resolution to any problems that arise.

 Maintaining such a positive customer service record will help you to achieve rewards in terms of additional customers who will hear about your fantastic customer service through the grapevine.