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Unhappy Customer: It is a difficult job being in customer service. However, it is one of the most important roles in keeping the company operations going from a customer perspective.

Having been in tech enabled startups before, I can appreciate how important strong customer service has been in our sales pitches. We have even lost some sales pitches with large clients because our support size did not appear adequate for such businesses.

This article is about dealing with unhappy customer and managing expectations. Customer service has utmost respect from me for the hardship they go through on some difficult calls. It is wrong to blame the customer – they are only calling because there is something they are severely distressed about.

The post discusses 6 key things to consider while dealing with dissatisfied customer.

1. Listen: What is the customer unhappy about?

The stock response from most people when we hear someone shouting is to prevent the noise. This is handled by someone hanging up or someone even shouting back. Neither of these are good from good customer service point of view.

The first and foremost tenet for customer service is to listen.

• What is the customer telling us?
• Sometimes, the problem might feel trivial. But, if they are taking the effort of calling the customer service, it is important to them
• Don’t speak for them : It is extremely annoying when customer care representative speaks for a customer and doesn’t listen fully. I agree that there might be patterns. But if the representative is not listening, the call is a failure right at the start.
• Don’t judge the customer’s problem. Given their circumstances, something trivial to us might be extremely important for the customer. I agree that not everything can be fixed at once, but the customer will need to know why.

Unfortunately the customer service role is right at the firing line. The one thing that will really help is to disconnect yourself from the product or service. It would be clearly to listen and understand the customer’s point of view.

2. How does this customer’s experience impact the business?

The common practice of businesses is to split the customer portfolio into tiers. In my very first role in B2B business, the customer was allocated a business tier. Based on their tier, the impact of their grievance would be calculated.

This is not always a great mechanism, but the business has to survive as well. From a purely objective manner, the business will need to focus on their prime deals and clients.

Having said that, there are extraneous circumstances where these rules don’t apply

• The problem is due to a basic feature having potential to impact wider customer range or brand reputation
• It is a minimum expectations desired from the product when it was sold to the customer
• The problem has caused a significant halt at the customer’s day to day business activity
• Fix for this problem is immediate since it affects legal/financial areas of the customer’s business

The above is simply a subset of all the various circumstances where prioritization might fail. In this situation, we are not only looking at an unhappy customer, but a severely disappointed one which is more dangerous.

3. Short Term and Long Term Solutions

Priority of a customer’s request depends upon two factors – whether they have a workaround for the problem quoted. If they do, the battle is half won. End of the day, even the unhappy customer wants to do their job. They have better work to do than calling the service provider to find out when a solution will be provided.

The point about workarounds is that they are brilliant short term solutions which can reduce the impact for the time being. However, they ought to be tempered. Not all problems can be fixed. As a business, you’ll need to think about where to focus your finite resources.

• Is a workaround really possible? How difficult is this workaround? If it is not easy at all, I would question the value and relevance of such a workaround. Priority in such a situation will be very high
• Short term solutions can help you douse fire for the time being, but you will need to think of providing a long term solution. This will entail preventing such issues from happening again.

Most customers are sensible and understand you have limitations. This is where the next point becomes extremely important.

4. Expectation Management with the unhappy customer

An anxious, unhappy customer may sometimes want a fix right away. Sometimes, customers are gentle and understanding. They are even kind to understand your problems and try to listen to your situation too. However, it is exceedingly important to manage expectations

• If a customer is expecting fix in 2 days while the fix might take 5 – it is horrible for the customer to find out about this 2 days later. Even if you are projecting wrong, give them the worst possible range so that they are prepared to work out their final solution. Remember, you fix is only for a part of the problem and not the entire solution. So, they will need more time.
• If you are not sure when the customer can expect a solution, please tell them that and also inform them when you can provide a level of certainty. The worst thing to happen is for the customer to discover in the very last minute that a solution is not available. If the problem is hard, let them know straight away. This is not just about being transparent, but good business too so that they know the type of values they are working with.
• It is ok to disappoint a customer now rather than stringing them along. If you know something about the issue, please talk to them and prepare them for what to expect.

Keeping the hat of a product manager, I know that we cannot act on all problems at one. We will only have to pick and choose from the finite resources we have. This is where prioritization is extremely important and the need to be objective. I am quite a fan of the RICE process of prioritization for the very reason. You can also use MOSCOW to help prioritisation.

5. You cannot keep everyone happy

Unhappy customers are unfortunately not always appeased. You simply cannot keep everyone happy. It is business, some people are bound to be disappointed.

But, this is not an excuse for bad behavior or poor quality of service. There is only a certain set of things you can do. However, if you know that you are going to disappoint the customer, please be honest with them.

Instead of promising them something that would never be delivered, give them the certainty so that they can fix their overarching problem. By stretching the problem, you are not only making the customer further unhappy but severely damaging your reputation.

6. Communicate with the unhappy customer

Some customer service training tells people to avoid response to angry customers. This only angers them further. It is ok to communicate more and show that you are interested in solving their problem.

If you don’t communicate, it will appear that you are ignoring them which immediately erodes customer trust.

As you can see, the common themes elucidated in this article are customer trust, transparency and business strategy. If you are able to tie these together as a business, you can head the business in a progressive direction.