Thursday, November 1. 2007'Business' RelationshipsJohn Linton
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Never a truer word spoken. I agree with every word written. All the posts make interesting reading. Thanks John
Comment (1)
We are fortunate in my workplace that we deal with most customers face to face, so we don't have the issue of infinite recurrence of our 0.01%. We also have the advantage of setting charges individually, which gives the ability deter a continuing relationship using price (which does fail sometimes - but often the customer then becomes 'worth the effort').
What puzzles me in my industry, is the number of people (surely much more than 0.01% of our clientele) whose attitudes completely back flip between different 'management levels' when addressing the same issue. Fortunately I am seldom on the aggressive, vociferous (thank you John), discourteous end these days but it does happen so I do understand the frustration (which may be more severe in my case given my positions proximity to my superior and the fact that the attitude is always reported to my superior and as such the adverse attitude is always reported back to me). This is a pattern in people I have witnessed repeating itself over many years by people of remarkably different backgrounds and I have always failed to understand it. Perhaps as you say John, this pattern is a result a need. In this case, I would assume it is a need to give themselves placebo superiority - and the difficulty of that amplifies as the issue us fed up the management ladder. What puzzles me in my industry, is the number of people (surely much more than 0.01% of our clientele) whose attitudes completely back flip between different 'management levels' when addressing the same issue. Fortunately I am seldom on the aggressive, vociferous (thank you John), discourteous end these days but it does happen so I do understand the frustration (which may be more severe in my case given my positions proximity to my superior and the fact that the attitude is always reported to my superior and as such the adverse attitude is always reported back to me). This is a pattern in people I have witnessed repeating itself over many years by people of remarkably different backgrounds and I have always failed to understand it. Perhaps as you say John, this pattern is a result a need. In this case, I would assume it is a need to give themselves placebo superiority - and the difficulty of that amplifies as the issue us fed up the management ladder. Comment (1)
as you say, only the unhappy 0.01% complain. That doesn't make theose issue invalid. It means the customer is not satified. Rather than pushing them away, it may be a good opportunity to improve proccess by listening to your customers and make a better business. Is the customer really being unreaonable and abusive, or is you business being ignorant (my way or the highway).
Comment (1)
I think I know which particular incident brought this on If my suspicions are correct, it involved a certain "polite request" to remove a few inappropriate things from a signature (a pretty trivial request), which resulted in him abusing one fellow customer and making offensive remarks about my own bedroom habits (which, I must say, were very promptly removed, thank you to (s)he who did that). However, at no point did he seem to direct any of that at ExeTel staff directly.
I've got to admit, even if this wasn't the case, it reminds me of why I agree with you. There are a certain breed of customers that you can never please no matter how far you go. They will always find something to be superior about. Luckily, they are in the minority. It seems that very few people have serious problems with their service - from my time looking at the Live Chat, we might get 5-10 people a day, which isn't many considering the 60,000 customers Exetel has. I see a few more in the forums, but again it's not enough to be a serious issue. Most of the time, the fix is relatively straightforward (or might be a bit more complicated) and the customer is happy. It's just those one or two... Comment (1)
At least Exetel customers are paying for the service they want to condemn ... I have the pleasure each day of answering all the customer feedback for the "free" service which the orgsanisation I work for provides. Luckily, 99.9% of it is via email (though .1% manage to track down our admin phone number which is only answered by a human being part-time and a machine the rest of the time on which that .1% leave various threats and demands).
Yes - we provide a free service in a marketplace in which there are several competing "for fee" (as in $800+ per year) commercial competitors. Not that this seems to have any effect on their expectations of us! I'm often tempted to offer the dissatisfied "customers" a refund of twice what they're paying for our free service Comment (1)
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