Are you guilty of these 5 business mistakes?
Bad customer service can definitely kill your loyal customers and destroy your business’s reputation. In this blog post, I’ll be talking about my personal experience with Greenwich Pizza’s Online Delivery in order to prove my point.
Think of it as a personal case study.
My little brother and I used to be huge fans of this establishment because we liked their pizza. After what we experienced, however, I don’t think we’re going to be doing business with them anytime soon.
You might not know this, but here’s the reality: Your customers will notice you because of your product. Afterwards, they may either stay or leave, depending on your service.
1. Wasting your customer’s time.
Experience:
After receiving an email that says we need to wait 3-5 minutes for their call to confirm our order, we waited for 15 minutes and no call arrived. We ended up calling their hotline to follow-up the call instead.
Lesson:
In this day and age where convenience is valuable, your customers expect your product and your service to be hassle-free. If you can’t do this, your customers may go to your competitors instead.
Your business is there to solve a problem and meet a demand. If you can’t do it in a timely manner, don’t bother doing it in the first place because your customers’ time will just be wasted.
2. Informing your customer after an inconvenience has already been made.
Experience:
We received the call after 30 minutes. The representative told us that because the product we ordered has just been released, it’s not yet available for the Ultimate Greenwich Card.
I said, okay, I’ll change the order, then, so that we can still avail of the “buy one take one” reward from the Ultimate Greenwich Card.
She said I couldn’t change the order anymore since it has already been processed.
The card’s reward is limited only to the size of the pizza, not on its flavor. And now you’re saying that because the pizza is different in flavor, I can’t avail of the card’s reward anymore?
Lesson:
If you’re still working on the development of your new product, put a disclaimer on your business’s website.
It really kills your customers’ mood when you tell them something after the damage has already been done.
It’s already spilled milk so what else can your customer do?
3. Failing to deliver.
Experience:
The reward which we were expecting to receive was not given because we were informed (afterwards!) that the product we purchased is not available for redeeming the reward.
Lesson:
If you promised something to your customers, you better make sure that you’ll deliver it to them without fail. This is one of the most common business mistakes: over-promising and under-delivering will definitely kill your business.
4. Making your customers feel powerless.
Experience:
Since the representative told us that the order is already processed (without calling to confirm with us first!) and that the delivery is on its way, we couldn’t cancel the order anymore.
So instead of giving us the power whether to continue to order or not, we actually felt “forced” to buy even though we didn’t want to anymore.
Lesson:
If you can’t deliver on what you promised, make sure to tell your customers before so that they have a choice whether to continue their purchase or not.
You’re supposed to make your clients feel special and satisfied, not forced and powerless.
5. Saying one thing and doing the other.
Experience:
We received an email that says we need to wait for a confirmatory call first before our order is processed.
But then, the agent says that because we’re a regular customer, they already processed our order without calling us anymore.
What do you expect us to do? You told us to wait for confirmation first then now you’re telling us that you didn’t bother calling us anymore since we’re already regulars so you went ahead and processed it already?
Lesson:
If you say you’re going to do something, do it.
Don’t confuse your customers and expect them to understand.
Customers only understand what they experience – if you email them to wait for a call, they’ll wait for the call. They won’t understand your internal company policies – they’re not your employees, you know!
Take note of these business mistakes and avoid doing them. You don’t want to kill your customers and subsequently your business, now, do you?
Any violent reactions? Motivated comments? Feel free to comment below.
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Live wisely,
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