eCommerce Cookbook EXTRA - Advanced Customer Service (4)
As you may know, the Cookbook tutorials aren't just based on my own experience, but also detailed interviews with experts who have walked the walk and built successful businesses in whatever field the Cookbook covers.
In the case of the eCommerce Cookbook, I interviewed several ecommerce experts, including sapven and pekadis on STM.
And for the customer service sections, I also picked the brains of a friend of mine who has worked in and consulted on customer service for nearly two decades (including working with STM for a while).
In the course of our conversation, he mentioned that there were some advanced customer service techniques that he finds very helpful - and shortly afterward, sent me this training document he uses himself.
So, if you want to take your customer service to the next level - read on!
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Advanced Customer Service With Parent/Child/Adult Technique
A lot of good customer service practice comes down to consciously managing the relationship and the balance of power between yourself and the customer.
Why is this important?
There's a couple of opposing myths about customer service, both partially true and both dangerously false.
The century-old myth 'The Customer Is Always Right' was, in its time, a necessary counter to the accepted wisdom of the time: 'Caveat Emptor'. That's Latin for "let the buyer beware" - because the balance of power rests with the seller in any given dispute.
In today's marketplace, Caveat Emptor is increasingly false. Dangerously so, because if you act that way, appearing to show arrogance or indifference, the customer will not only walk, they'll trash your reputation to the best of their ability in the process. You may not be compelled to make things right, but it'll work out badly for you if you don't.
However, The Customer Is Always Right has become a monster of its own.
Unnecessary servility to the customer, always allowing yourself to be the lectured child in the relationship, will cause you to over-promise. It will cause you to waste time and money. It is emotionally draining and will burn out your front-line service staff, which could well mean yourself. And it will encourage the customer to act out in future.
How to get the balance right?
The standard model for this is the Parent-Adult-Child theory.
In this model, a customer will tend to approach you as:
- A parent – your senior and superior, treating you as someone to be lectured and corrected.
- An adult, treating you with respect but not deference, willing to negotiate on even terms to create a positive and constructive outcome.
- A child, either needily requiring constant support (the Good Child) or displaying incoherent anger, making absurd demands or slinging personal insults (the Naughty Child).
There's an instinctual, natural tendency to do the wrong thing here, and avoiding this is a key skill in handling challenging customers.
Managing the Parent
When faced with the Lecturing Parent, we often attempt to either one-up them by getting all superior ourselves. This is matching Parent with Parent, which tends to make them escalate this unhealthy competition.
Sometimes, instead, we cower and seek their approval, or we become resentful. This is acting the Child to their Parent. They'll become highly demanding at this point, as we've let them feel like they're in a position of absolute control over us.
So, how do we maneuver the customer from Parent to Adult?
The trick is to act the adult yourself.
It's easy to confuse this with acting the parent, so be mindful of that.
Work toward constructive solutions, and signpost to the customer what you're aiming to achieve so that they can understand why you're doing what you're doing.
Apologise with sincerity – don't be gushingly profuse, and don't be miserly in your apologies.
Engage the customer in what you're doing – if they suggest or demand a course of action that isn't practicable or isn't the best way forward, propose your alternative, explain why it'll work better, and seek their agreement.
Never allow yourself to reply in anger. If the customer is talking down to you, rise above it and act as if they'd been acting the adult all along.
Managing the Child
Especially when faced with the Naughty Child, we often attempt to play the parent. We sternly lecture them in order to get them to settle down. We refuse to provide any assistance until they behave. This tends to work out badly because we are not, in fact, in a position of parent-like authority and the customer knows it. It's like being an ineffectual parent whose toddler is having a screaming tantrum in public, knowing that there'll be no consequences for their bad behaviour.
With the Good Child, the problem is more that we indulge them. We waste significant time on helping them on a case-by-case basis, rather than pointing them to self-serve options. This encourages them to become more and more dependent, and then if we ignore them because we frankly can't afford to spend any more time on them, we frequently see a flip from Good Child to Naughty Child.
Again, the solution is to act the adult.
Be calm, be reasonable, be rational. Never respond in kind when they act out, and never appear to lecture them about their misbehaviour.
Show the Good Child ways in which they can self-serve. If they're taking up too much of your time, try to avoid simply cutting off your support – instead, point them in a direction where they can get what they're looking for via self-service.
Naughty Child customers can be very unpleasant sometimes, using personal insults and even making threats.
It's tempting to withhold service until they behave. Think carefully before doing so, as you may be falling into the trap of acting the Parent here. Be sure that you understand why they're angry, and propose fair remedial action based on the situation.
If they do start making threats or acting in other ways that are highly inappropriate in a very bad way, the usual best option is to offer a fair and reasonable solution to their original problem, but follow it up with a single warning – adult to adult, in tone – that you appreciate how frustrated they are, and you are taking these actions in order to put the situation right, but that you can't continue to serve them as a customer beyond that point if they continue to act in this way. Your legal options may be limited here, particularly if they're in a distant country, so it's best to ensure that – whatever other actions you feel are necessary – you break off contact in a manner that leaves them no further justifiable reason to try to contact you again.
If you follow these rules, you should be able to manage your customer's behaviour and ensure an even, respectful balance of power between vendor and customer. From there, you can usually easily come to a fair agreement in a constructive manner.
Pro tips:
Effective Apologies
- When apologising for a failure in the service you're providing, even if it's not your fault or the customer appears to be wrong about it, start with 'I'm really sorry about that', or similar. Never 'we're sorry' – don't abstract the blame.
- When the customer is not alleging any failing, but simply a misfortune that they've experienced, I'd go for 'I'm really sorry to hear that'. It sounds more sincere that way – you're not attempting to take responsibility for something that manifestly wasn't caused or influenced by you.
- Get your apology in early. It should be pretty much the first part of your response.
Leave A Route Open
- Never leave a customer thinking that they have no way forward. If they're looking for technical help that you can't (or don't have the time to) provide, point them toward self-serve options. If they desperately want a replacement for a product that you can't ship any more, propose fair recompense and point them toward similar products or even alternative vendors*. A customer who feels they have no options will be far more likely to give you trouble.
*Use caution when alternative vendors. Make sure they're well-known and moderately reliable if possible. Otherwise, the customer may seek to hold you responsible if that vendor lets them down.
Open Questions
Customers very rarely give you all the information you need at first point of contact. You'll usually need to ask for more details.
However, asking 'closed questions' straight from the start – 'Was the packaging damaged? 'Would a full refund settle this to your satisfaction?' - is likely not to give you all the information you need.
This leads to misunderstandings, and if you do end up taking action to make it right, you'll often end up over- or underdoing it because you don't know the whole story or what they actually want.
So, start with open questions – 'Could you tell me more about the condition in which the product arrived?' 'What would resolve this matter to your satisfaction?' Then narrow down with closed questions afterwards.
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Thanks to Ian for that great post. If you've got any questions, post them below and I'll pass them on to him.
Great post!
The "open questions" part can not be overstated. It's so easy to assume you know what the customer wants and to start suggesting. Don't.
We ship replacements very, very quickly, where customers have their replacement the next day. Often, they don;t even need it that fast.
Once we figured that out, we don't day "you'll have it tomorrow" but ask "by when do you need it?"
Also, speed really matters. The faster you can get a problem solved, the better.
And as a last bit, lots of this isn't rational. It's emotional. And some are just insane.
If that's the case, part ways as quickly as possible. A full refund basically gives them nothing to claim anymore, so that's often a good option.
Even when expensive, it's often the best choice..
I've seen too many people going mad trying to deal with their one psycho customer. Once you establish their identity, it's well worth paying the necessary to get them the hell away from your inbox
One point I'd like to add to this excellent post:
Don't let your emotional attachment to customer reactions influence your ambition, work-ethic or business goals.
Customers are humans. This means that most of them are nice, friendly and reasonable. A subset is angry with the world and themselves and are complete and utter wastes of oxygen.
Here's the tricky part: The latter group is far more likely to contact you, and especially contact you repeatedly.
Understand that it isn't your fault (while of course, accepting the blame in your communication with them).
Whatever you do, don't let negative responses dissuade you from building your ecommerce business.
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