Every business person’s ultimate goal is to acquire as many customer service activities as possible, and retain them. The main goal is having customers come back to you.
But this is not the situation for most of us. Many businesses have to put up with customer horror stories about their website in social media sites and other review platforms. This post will help you understand why buyers may go public with you poor customer service activities.
Poor Service leads to bad Reputation
When customers experience inadequate services, they will spread this more than when they receive excellent services. We are all aware that negative experiences, especially in public settings, spread like bushfire.
And living in an era where news can spread to the world with the click of a button, you can imagine how bad it can get if a customer begins spreading bad news about your brand. You will undoubtedly find your business in turmoil, trying to get back customers.
Take an example where you are operating a website doing affiliate marketing. Your customers will always be curious before they get to a deal.
If you are the kind of person who doesn’t reply to emails or calls from your client in good time, everyone will hear of your inconvenience. Buyers will use all social media platforms to taint your business.
In this article, we’ll expound more on problems leading to annoying customer experiences and possible remedies.
What Could Cause Customer to Tell Horror Stories about Your Brand
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Poor communication
Customer service activities center on effective communication with shoppers.
A buyer can be offended by many reasons emanating from your customer service agent like rudeness, impatience, or a misunderstanding while having a live call or chat with a customer service agent.
Your company’s policies might also be confusing to a buyer. With these negatives, dissatisfied customers will commit their time to spread a negative picture of your company on social media platforms.
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Possible Solution
Recognize the power of effective interaction with shoppers in your customer service activities. Ensure your employees understand the value of satisfactory communication to your customers.
Familiarize your organization thoroughly with your communication channels. It’s always important to keep a record of what your customers say over the phone, live chats, or on social media platforms.
Records will help support staff pinpoint crucial information from previous conversations, especially when customers contact for a second time. Shoppers will always appreciate the fact that you remember they called again.
On top of this, always keep your business connected and organized.
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Misleading Promises
During ads, companies will use promotions and propositions to attract clients. You should always be careful when it comes to brand promotions as they act as promises.
Shoppers, on the other end, are always clicking site after the other in search for the best offers. If your promotions are attractive, customers will flood into your market.
But if customers find out your promotion material is unclear, or looks fraudulent, word could spread and this could ruin your reputation.
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Possible Solution
It’s better to have no promise at all than making promises to customers and not keeping your word. Most customers have reported that companies have repeatedly failed to deliver their promises.
Companies should ensure that they broadcast brands with valid promises. When brands are publicized, especially with a promotion, their images stick around the customer’s minds for a long time.
Thus, if the brand fails to meet the promise, customers will have an excellent reason to taint the brand’s repute across all possible public platforms.
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Going Against Your Shopper’s Expectations
Once you’ve built a customer base, you engage in a business relationship with every buyer. This engagement means that they believe in you and value your business.
When you betray a buyer, they will most likely develop frustrations, and express their feelings to the public on social platforms.
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Possible Solution
Do not betray your shopper’s expectations. For instance, in the case of emails, over 80% of your customers expect to some feedback within 24 hours.
Exceeding your customer’s expected period of response will inconvenience them. It is also a sign of ineffective customer service activities.
Understand your customers well to avoid betraying their trust and how they think about your company.
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Customer’s Assumed Moral Obligations
Most customers have assumed the responsibility to act as ‘saviors’ to the public from bad customer service.
When such customers experience mediocre or lousy customer service, they get down to their channels and enlighten the public at large of your incompetence in service delivery.
By this, they feel like what they are doing is good for the world. When such lousy customers do this, it’s awful for your business.
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Possible Solution
Try as much to avoid upsetting your customers. Train the staff handling the different customer service activities how to handle complicated customers to avoid turning them into enemies.
A slight mistake that may result in a customer having a bad experience with your business might turn them away for good. 58% of customers will turn away from a brand after a bad experience.
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Customers Developing Strong, Negative Emotions
Human beings are emotional. When dealing with customers, the fact is that you are entirely oblivious to their emotional state.
Initially, when engaging in business with customers, they are hardly upset. Issues will stem from the failure to meet your customer’s demands with time.
Customer’s emotions will be triggered negatively through failures such as;
- Late deliveries
- Lack of communication
- Faulty support processes
- Delay in services
Customers with strong negative emotions like anger and hatred will most likely engage in vengeful behaviors after such bad experiences.
Rogue customers with such emotions will always find an avenue to get back to you, and in most cases, you won’t like it. After they exhaust all their options to turn the situation around, they venture online to expose everything.
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Possible Solution
Developing positive emotions should start with employees. Always yearn to develop a positive attitude amongst employees while at work, so that they can handle rogue customers with ease.
We all have chances to correct situations that went wrong. Note that in most cases, customers always avoid talking and leave it to you.
Companies should utilize tech to acquire shopper feedback and reviews. This information will help the company learn its buyers’ expectations.
When customers are emotionally unstable, they will likely end up having a bad customer service experience. Statistics show that 34% of such customers will end up revenging by posting unfavorable reviews on social media or other online platforms.
Bottom Line
No matter how good you are, maintaining quality customer service activities is a hard task.
At times you will find your company at the edge of handling unreasonable demands from a customer. Later, the same customer will go public with the incident.
So what can you do to minimize such a menace?
Try to understand the customer. Give such customers some time for things to cool down, then reach them and try to reinstate the relationship.
Take everything as a learning opportunity; understand and handle your customers better for a successful customer service experience.
