Depending on the size of your business and what you’re selling, you likely have hundreds or perhaps thousands of customers.   But imagine for a moment if you had just one customer who provided all the income you made in a year (not a total fictional example, as some businesses do just have one or two clients).

Got that image in your head?

Good, then let me ask you this: how would you treat that one customer?  If that customer seemed unsatisfied, how would you soothe him or her?  What would you do to ensure that not only was this customer satisfied, but delighted with your products and service?

Whatever your answers to the above questions, that’s what you should be doing for each and every one of your customers. 

When you treat each customer as if they’re the only customer you have, they’ll feel it – and respond accordingly.  If you treat them like gold, you’ve just lessened the chances that they’ll be one of the 68% of customers slipping away to your competitor because they feel neglected.

A fact of business: things won’t always go the way we planned. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes.  Sometimes forces beyond our control affect our business.  And when these sorts of things happen, we’ll have unhappy customers on our hands.

The problem is that some business owners hope against hope that customers won’t notice …or at the very least they won’t care.  But of course that’s a pipe dream.  Of course customers will notice and they’ll care – and that means they could be on the verge of getting upset.

Instead of waiting for that to happen, your best bet is to be proactive.  Acknowledge the problem, and offer up a solution.  Don’t wait for your customers to complain first.  And don’t believe that they haven’t noticed (because they have).

If you wait, people have time to ratchet up their frustration level.  If your market likes to chat on niche forums or they have blogs, waiting means you give them time to grow upset and start talking about it on those popular forums and markets.

Have you ever seen someone complain about something on a forum?  At first it’s just one complaint. Then another customer jumps in …and another.  Next thing you know, you have an “angry mob” …and sometimes they’re out for blood.  If they get themselves worked up enough, whatever you do won’t be enough to pacify them.

Think of a herd of cattle.  When one gets spooked and starts running, they all start running.  And once you have a spooked herd stampeding, it’s awfully hard to stop them.  No amount of coaxing and soothing will slow the stampeding herd. 

The only way to deal with a herd like this is to make sure they don’t stampede in the first place.

And so it is with your customers.  If you want to prevent a public lashing that could very well get out of control, be proactive with solutions immediately after you’ve discovered a problem.  When you step forward first with solutions, the “herd” can’t stampede.

If you’re doing any volume of business, you will get unsatisfied customers, refund requests and the like.  You might also get your fair share of bullies and other quirks on the Internet.

The reason I mention the bullies is because you do not have to extend them the same courtesy that you extend your other customers.  If someone is bullying you, verbally abusing you, or otherwise being unprofessional in their dealings with you, cut them loose.  If they’re a subscriber, unsubscribe them.  If they’re a customer, refund their money and move on.

No, you don’t have to respond to their email threats.  In fact you shouldn’t, as they are likely looking to get a rise out of you.  Bullies aren’t worth the effort.  Cut all ties, ban them from your site, and don’t give them a second thought.

The above applies to bullies and abusers.  So how do you deal with genuine customer complaints?  Answer: as quickly and professionally as possible.

Fortunately most of the customer service issues you deal with will involve polite customers looking for resolution.  You handle their inquiries, they’re satisfied, and they’ll probably be a loyal customer.  Indeed, this even applies to some who ask for refunds – handle the request promptly and professionally, and they’re likely to buy from you again.

But of course from time to time you will run into people who are very upset.  Ideally you get to handle these people individually and privately through email.  However, you may have to handle them publicly …especially when a real issue has been posted on a forum.

        Note: if you have the abusers or bullies posting on forums with outrageous issues, generally you can ignore them.  It’s a judgement call, but don’t get dragged into silly fights                    with forum trolls.

                   What we’re referring to below is when there is a real issue – maybe you screwed up or something unforeseen happened that put a damper on your reputation.  In that                    case answering publicly can actually be a good idea, because if one person raises the issue in public, you can be certain others are thinking about it.  You can “clear the                    air” by posting a well thought out response.

Here are two important tips to help you handle these tricky situations:

Tip #1: Stay calm and leave your emotions out of it.

When we work really hard at our businesses, it’s easy to start taking things in a personal way.  For example, if someone says our products “sucks,” by extension we feel that they’ve told us WE suck (which isn’t the case, but it certainly feels that way). 

If someone feels we’ve done something wrong, pride can get in the way …and we might lash out in anger.  Sometimes a customer who’s upset seems to know exactly how to push our “hot buttons” – and we get angry and frustrated too.  And sometimes we just have an off day and find it easy to get irritable at the simplest of requests.  The end result is that we’re a little too terse, perhaps a little rude, and sometimes downright unprofessional.

In short, sometimes it’s hard to give the logical response instead of the emotional response.  But if you want to give exceptional customer service, you need to approach your customers and prospects in a non-emotional way.

If you receive an email that “pushes your buttons,” walk away for a bit.  Don’t answer it immediately, as you’ll be answering under an emotional fog.  If stepping away for a bit doesn’t help, then ask a trusted friend help you construct a reply. 

Usually a calm reply will calm the upset customer. 

Tip #2: Focus on solutions, not excuses.

Sometimes we do screw up.  And yet pride steps in and we look for a scapegoat.

As an example, let’s go back to some of the examples used earlier in this series.  Recall how we discussed why you shouldn’t make promises to your customers until AFTER a project is complete and in your hands. 

Now consider if you were waiting for a freelancer to finish the project, but they dropped the ball.  But you’ve already promised your customers something big.   Who do you blame?

The knee-jerk reaction is to blame the freelancer.  And indeed, many business owners would not only blame the freelancer, but they would be sure their customers knew that their broken promise was due to the freelancer dropping the ball.

But of course we know that’s not right.  The entire responsibility of our business rests on OUR shoulders.  If we can’t deliver because a freelancer dropped the ball on our project, the broken promise is our responsibility.  Why?  Because we shouldn’t have made the promise until after we were sure we could deliver.

Those who are most successful take full credit for the good things in their life …but also take full responsibility for the bad things.  You no doubt know this already, and are making a conscious effort to take responsibility as well as credit.  Most successful business people do this…

At least in private.

But what about in public?  What about when a customer service issue arises – perhaps publicly – and there’s the knee-jerk response to “save face?”  Should we explain to our customers why we dropped the ball, broke our promises, didn’t deliver, or provided an unsatisfactory experience?

To a degree it will depend on the situation, but overall remember this: customers don’t care about you.  They care about themselves.  That means they’d rather hear solutions from you than excuses. 

Bottom line: apologize, then focus on solutions for your customers, making amends if need be …and keep the excuses out of it. 

If you find yourself starting to explain why something happened, step back and look at it objectively (or ask an unbiased third party to look at your response).  Is the explanation necessary …or does it just look like you’re making excuses?  Are you accepting responsibility and apologizing – or trying to shift the blame?

A response that’s full of explanations and blame-shifting obviously was created to serve YOU, and your customers know’s it.  They want you to solve the problem, and anything else you say or do that’s not directly related to you apologizing, making amends, and solving the problem will just be seen as a source of further frustration.

Let me give you an exaggerated example to make the point…

Let’s suppose you ordered a pizza for delivery, and you were told to expect it in 30 minutes.  An hour later you call and find out that your order hadn’t made it into the system, but they would put it in now, put a rush on it, and have it to you in 20 minutes.  And they’ll give you your order for free to boot.

Good solution?  You bet it is.  Chances are your frustration of being hungry and waiting for an order that never showed up would melt away pretty quickly.  And you’d likely do business with them again – and tell your friends about your good experience too..

Now instead imagine if when you called the person told you about the computer failure, and how they’re short on delivery drivers tonight, and how the oven had even gone down for a time.  Yadda, yadda, yadda …plenty of excuses, but nothing to soothe the frustrated customer, no apologies, and no solutions.

Would you be happy when you’re pizza finally showed up?  Marginally happy at best.  But you might be a little upset that no one seemed to care about your problems (e.g., the fact that you were starving and your pizza was late).

See the difference?

Mainly what customers want from you is an acknowledgement of their problems, and a quick solution.  They don’t want to feel neglected. They don’t want to feel like no one cares. And they don’t want to feel like their problems are unimportant, and that they’re just one of thousands of others.

Make your customer feel special, make her feel like she’s the only customer you have and that finding solutions to her problems is the most important thing in the world to you, and you’ll likely have a customer for life. 

When you provide service like this, it doesn’t even matter if your competitors have lower prices or better offers – you can beat them by providing exceptional services.  And that starts with really, truly caring about your customers.

In the beginning of this series I shared with you a story of a how a company lost my business because they never replied to my email.  This could happen to you too.

Remember, it doesn’t even matter if it’s their fault they didn’t get your reply, as the case might be if they use an email account that aggressively filters email.  Your customer might not even be computer savvy enough to know that a filter ate her email.  All she knows is that you didn’t reply …and she might take her business elsewhere.

The solution?

First off, make other means of communication available.  That means you should provide a postal address as well as a phone number and perhaps even a fax line (you don’t even need a fax machine or dedicated line if you sign up for one of the many online fax services such as efax.com).

Remember however that many people don’t want to take the time to write a postal letter to you, they won’t send a fax, and they dread getting on the phone because they don’t like talking to people, or they hate the dreaded “voicemail hell.”  Even if you don’t have that sort of system, they still might skip calling you for fear that you have an automated system.

So that leaves many of your customers using email to get in touch with you.  But as already mentioned, emails can get lost and filtered – and your customer will almost always blame you, perhaps assuming you simply didn’t bother to reply.

The solution?  Install a help desk on your site.

A help desk allows people to submit a “ticket” online …and yet still enjoy the convenience of receiving replies via email.  You can remind them that if they don’t receive a reply they should log into their ticket online, as all replies will be there (even if the email gobbled them up).

It’s not foolproof of course, since some people will forget to log back in.  However, it’s better than having all customers who don’t get emails assuming that you simply don’t answer your customer service mail.

The second thing you need to do is answer all customer service inquiries as quickly as possible.

Consider this – someone who’s sitting there with a credit card in hand but needs a question answered first will likely buy if you answer quickly. The longer you wait, the more the “excitement” of your product is going to wear off …and when emotion wanes, the prospect is less likely to buy.

Answer quickly while the customer is still excited, and you’re almost assured of making the sale.

Or consider this – you have an existing customer who has a support issue.  Perhaps they want a refund, perhaps they need support with the product.  Whatever the problem, they too deserve a speedy response.

In the case of an existing customer, the longer you wait to reply, the MORE emotional the customer will become.  And that’s not in a good way.  They’ll become more upset if they feel like you’re ignoring them.

So when we talk about a “fast response,” what sort of timeline are we referring to?

Ideally you should shoot for same-day responses.  For example, you can check your emails or support desk twice – morning and night – and take care of all inquiries.  Three times daily is even better to ensure customers and prospects never wait more than a few hours for a reply (except over night).

Of course best of all would be too answer questions as they come in throughout the day, but that’s not always possible (as you simply aren’t chained to your desk, and/or it’s not always feasible for other reasons).  If you have a heavy customer support load, then you may consider hiring a virtual assistant to handle inquiries as they come in.

Regardless of how often you check and answer your customer service emails, there is one thing you should do: tell your customers when they can expect a reply.

For example, if you check email two or three times per day, then generally customers can expect to receive a reply within 12 hours or less.

You need to also recognize that your customers reside in all parts of the world in many time zones – so you need to let them know your time zone, and your customer service hours.  That way if they send an email in what is the morning for them but the middle of the night for you, they know they’re in for a wait.

Likewise, you need to let customers know your business days.  For example, do you answer emails over the weekends?  How about holidays? 

Whatever policy you decide on is fine, but you should inform your customers – both on your customer service page and in the confirmation email you send – when they can expect a reply. And then be sure to not only meet their expectations, but reply sooner than you promised.