Creating Remarkable Customer Service

The Small business show, episode 296 for Wednesday, September 30, 2020. Greetings, folks, and welcome back to the Small Business show where we are here to small business. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. We're only four more. Four more away. Well, four away from 300, I can say that.

Yeah, that's right.

We're. We're getting there. We're gonna have some massive, you know, celebration at 300. I don't know what it's going to be, but.

No, it'll be. It'll be a distanced celebration. Not. Not because of the pandemic, but just because that's how we've always done the show.

Yeah, I think. I think what we should do is tie it in with the relaunch, if you will, of our small business group on Facebook. We're gonna have a new name. We're gonna have a re. A little bit of a shift in focus and a re. Engagement.

And.

And we're going to talk more about that as Dave and I hash out the details.

Yeah, yeah. If you want to be part of our Facebook group, go ahead and join, but pay attention there because we're probably going to put a poll up soon, and if you don't answer the poll, we're just going to throw you out of the group because there's a lot of dead weight in our Facebook group, and this happens in Facebook groups Now, to be fair, you and I have not taken. Attended that particular garden.

I was going to say I. I'm often part of that dead weight because I do the show, I post it to the group, and then I get busy with, you know, other business things that I have going on, and then I come back in the next week. So we. We want to change up some of the things we're doing there to make it more of a resource for all of us.

Right.

And get some more engagement, which we're kind of going to talk about today. Customer service engagement. Right.

Customer service. It is my. One of my favorite topics of all time. Because, I mean, I love to say every business is the customer service business. Right. Because if you don't have, like, it. If you can find me a business that doesn't have customers, that's great. But because it makes life. Probably makes life way easier. But I don't know. I don't know where your income comes from. So, like.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

And it is one of the best ways to define what your company culture is about and your customer experience and to differentiate yourself from competitors. Because, you know, no matter what you do, there's always going to be somebody out there chasing, you know, the lowest price. You don't want to be there. You want to create value and a relationship with your customers. You got to be competitive, of course, but you want your customers to come to you for a reason. And I think we all make those kind of choices. Right. Well, I'm going to go with company X because I know they're going to take care of me. Right.

Well, that's it. Yeah. You want your customers to come to you for a reason, but that reason does not need to be. And in most cases is. Is. Should not be your price. Like that you be having the lowest price because then you have nothing else to work with from there. Right.

And it always goes down.

That's it.

Always going down.

That's it. So, you know, I. In our businesses, I always work to make people feel like I care about them. And really, that implies disingenuous manipulation. I didn't want to say manipulation because everything we do is manipulative. Right. But that implies that I'm disingenuous. My aim is to show customers how much we care about them. And I know that we care about our customers. And to be fair, we love getting orders from them and we love cashing their checks. Right. We really like that. But. But telling them just that isn't usually the thing that endears them to us. So instead of just focusing on that, we focus on. Okay, like, I'm going to go out of my way to answer your questions as quickly as I can. I'm going to go out of my way to make your life as easy as possible. And when I tell my customers that it has become a broken record, My job is to make your job as easy as possible. And I apologize for saying that, sort of tongue in cheek. I know I say this all the time, but it's still true today. It's just as true today as it was 10 years ago. My job is to make your job as easy as possible. And what I absolutely love more than getting the checks is now if the checks dried up, I might feel differently. So I want to put an asterisk on that. But at the moment, what I love more than getting the checks is when people say, oh, we know, like, you're our favorite vendor to work with. That tells me we're doing it right that time.

We're doing it right. Yeah, yeah, that's terrific. And I think that there's been study after study and I've seen it myself, if your customer encounters a problem and you solve it painlessly, quickly, maybe with a little self effacing humor, that customer loyalty is just gone off the charts.

Right.

Because they know that, oh, you know, hey, they value my, my business, they're going to take care of me. And even if again, that you'll see over time, those kind of customers don't shop you around as much because they know your pricing is part of your customer service as well. Right?

Yep.

Because if you really do believe I want to give the best value to my customer, you know that okay for me to give that value, this is my price. And I think the more confident you get in that, the less you really check with, you know, competition and what's going on. And because I can remember pricing things and somebody would say, well, so and so can do it for this. And I'm just like, well that's, that's great for them. And you know, we'd love to have you as a customer, but I understand if you need to go with that. But in order for us to provide a level of service that we have, you know, we know customers fall in love with, this is our price point. And oftentimes those customers go, okay, yeah, you know, let's go ahead and do it.

Yeah, they're just looking for, I mean there's, there's two things because I have that exact same conversation with our, our customers. It's, you know, they, here, here's where our price needs to be. Yes, I know you can get the, you know, the something that appears similar over there for the same deal. But the way we run our business, this is what we have to do. We've tried it the other way, which if you have tried it the other way, say that, if you haven't, don't say that you don't want to be. Especially in that moment where someone like the future of the business deal is, is in the, you know, is in the balance. People can tell when you're BSing them, don't BS them. But if you have tried, like, oh, you know, yeah, we did that with one customer, we lowered the price and you know what? It didn't work out. We had to fire that customer. If that's true, like, that's a powerful story to tell. Like we don't want your, we can't give you our business at that price, but you can get somebody else's business at that price. And it, like you said, it communicates volumes just by being confident Enough to say that. And truly one way you can gain that confidence is to try it. Because you might find like, oh, wait a minute, yes, okay, we're lowering our price here, but we can make it up here. And this, this actually works. You know, like you, I've done that and like found, oh, this isn't as bad as I thought it was. Like, this actually is good for the business. It gives us some flexibility. Some people will like that. But you. That's right, but, but if you have, if you have the experience of it and the confidence that alone, the fact that you have the experience and the confidence to say no, and here's why, and it's okay, if you don't want what we have to sell, you can go to that person, they suddenly realize, wait a minute, this is not two equal things.

That's right. And that is a discovery process. Because for many years in the technology businesses that I owned, I was a huge fan of bundling. And for many years it was all about convenience to the customer. Okay, we're going to bundle this. It includes all, we were doing everything very fast. It includes all overnight shipping anywhere in the US this flat rate. It includes the repair, this includes all the parts, it includes this type of warranty. And as the market matured, I guess and changed, I found that we could no longer support that bundle that mentality because everyone else, most other companies were doing everything a la carte. So if you did a quick look in this headline grabbing world that we were growing into, you would see, oh, that they're selling, you know, their Service price is 599 and this other company is at 399. Right. Or. And so if you didn't dig deeper to say, oh yeah, but we include, you know, overnight shipping to the east coast and by noon, not by three. And you know, we include this and our warranty is, you know, this. So ultimately we had to break that down to get into that initial price point realm and then you let the customer decide, I still like the convenience of this bundle thing, but to get our, to have ourselves be in that competitive realm, we had to, had to break it out.

That makes sense. Yeah. You have to learn things about not just your business from an insulated point of view, but how your business fits into the market that you're choosing to be in. And sometimes that means choosing to be in a different market so that your business fits better. Like there's nothing wrong with that. But, but yeah, that self awareness requires some experimentation for sure.

It does, yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so along the, you know, this customer service path, one of the things that I wanted to bring up again was a concept that I think, you know, you and I, Dave, really fell in love with back in like 2017 by a gentleman named Jean Louis Gasset, who used to be. He ran Apple Europe, I believe, and he helped start a company called the bos, which was an operating system design. Is that right?

Boss was awesome. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't. It did died on the vine, but at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he wrote an article about a customer service concept using some experiences at Apple, and he called it the two tokens concept of customer service. And I would love to read a quote that part of. From this article that we will link into the thing. And the quote is, Jean Louis said, when a customer brings a complaint, there are two tokens on the table. Token number one is, oh, it's nothing. It's not a problem. No big deal. And token number two is, oh, wow, you know, it's awful. It's the worst things. Both tokens are always played, so whoever chooses the first token forces the other to grab the token that's left. End quote. So you've got, you know, all these two different ways to approach a customer service problem. One is to kind of blow it off and play like it's nothing. But what's going to happen, according to guess A, is that your customer is going to choose the it's the worst thing ever. You know, it's awful token.

Yeah, the it's awful token.

Yeah, yeah. So you want to be the one to grab that awful token first so the customer grab can grab the only one that's left is like, oh, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. And I think you the way to do this or the way I've done it and taught my customer service people is you have to react as if. Because maybe it is at least it is to the customer that, oh, my. You know, this is the. This is the worst thing. This is awful that we let you down. Your package didn't show up on time, it's broken. Maybe we shipped you the wrong thing. Maybe our.

We delivered the wrong product. Even if it's a service, whatever it is.

That's right.

We did a bad job. Yep.

We did a bad job. And. And we take it extremely, you know, as serious we are, you know, I'm so sorry. You know, just because you can apologize without, you know, saying we did anything wrong even, but you can just go like, man, I'M so sorry. You've had this experience and I want you to know I am going to take care of it for you all the way through. We are going to solve it to make it right.

I wish I had and I don't know that I could have, but I wish early in my, you know, my business career, especially my self employed business career, I wish I had known about this concept because, but I don't know that it would have worked because you have that, you know, you have to get over your own ego. You have to get over yourself a little bit. It takes a lot of humility to sit and look at a customer and say, we gave you a bad experience. Let me fix that. Right. Like it's absolutely the right thing to say most of the time. There are certainly some scenarios where you just got to walk away from a customer. Right. But by and large that is very much the exception, you know, and you just, but, but you know, we always talk about use your ego as a tool here. You're saying, look, I'm going to be the one to fix this for you. Now suddenly you are their champion. Right. You're, they walked into, you're on their side. Yes. You move to the other side of the desk. That's right.

Yeah. And you know, you're showing empathy.

Right.

And you're kind of pacing the customer. Because the thing about a customer is people are very weary. You know, you're advertising something, you know, product or service. In the back of their mind, they're already thinking it's not going to be what they say.

Yeah, it's not good.

And so if they buy a product, you know, they've read some reviews, they've read good and bad reviews because everything, you know, usually has both. And they're, they're okay, what's going to happen? So you haven't built up that trust with them. The product shows up was, you know, I always talk about the, the out of box experience. What does the packaging look like? Or what is your cons, what does your service guy look like when he comes to their door? Or you know, service person, Are they dressed nice? Are they clean, clean cut? Do they introduce themselves? Do they have a name tag? I mean all those things that build trust, whether it's a product or service. And then when there's a problem, you know, your service tech didn't solve the IT problem. The dishwasher's leaking all over the kitchen floor. The product they bought doesn't do what you said. They are not, they, they just don't Trust, they're ready for a fight. So what, what the two tokens concept.

Does takes the fight out of it.

It takes the fight because you are telling them, I'm going to.

You.

I agree. And I'm going to fight with you to solve this problem.

Yes.

Most people aren't ready for that because they're used to being blown off, you know, talking to a customer service person.

Well, they're used to people saying it's not our fault, or, you know, we, we aren't going to help own this. And, and you can help own it without admitting fault. Now that gets, I mean, that gets into a sticky area. You know, I would say only avoid that if there's some legal reason where you're concerned about admitting fault. Otherwise, it's, it's totally okay. And in fact, I encourage you to say, sorry, you know, my bad. That's my fault. I'm going to fix this for you. Let me, please give me the opportunity to fix this for you. If they offer any resistance. Yeah, yeah.

And I don't, I don't even know that you have to say it's your fault at that point, because a lot of times you don't know.

No, you don't. Yeah, that's right.

But you can certainly say, hey, I am so sorry you had this experience and I'm going to fix it for you. And you know that you have to get this mantra over, you know, adopted by your customer service folks, is that that is the first, you know, you're serving in the tennis match, right? The first serve. You know, customers angry, the ball's coming at you 100 miles an hour, and they're, they're just, they're sure that you're going to blow them off. You're going to tell them it's going to take three to five days or you're going to have to call their manager, whatever, Right when you can go back and go, man, I am so sorry this happened, and I'm going to be the one to fix this for you, and let's figure it out together. It's very powerful. And I also think it's very powerful if you, if you're not sure what's going on or how to resolve things is just ask the customer what they want.

That's hugely powerful.

Yeah, sometimes it's unreasonable, you know, but you can certainly it helps empower them. You think, well, you know, if you're just getting the run around, it's like, okay, well, what can I do for you? As I research this process and I Talk to my manager. And I'm going to be your advocate here as we work through this process. What do you want?

I have a story to tell about that. Where I was in the customer's shoes and I was asked that question. It was very powerful. Right now, I would like to be the customer for a moment and ask you what I want. Our listeners, because today our sponsor is us. And we have, as we've mentioned on previous episodes, we now have two books out in our Small Business Pocket Guide series. We have our first book, Mistakes, and our second book called Partnerships is new and that's out. And we need some reviews for it. So what I'm gonna ask you to do today is to review our book. Now, in order to review Partnerships, you have to buy it. Now, we've set the price as low as we are able to do so on Amazon and it's 99 cents. Please buy it, review the book, and then show us the review. And if you want us to reimburse your 99 cents, send us your PayPal address. We'll take care of it. No problem.

Let me interrupt you real quick. Go ahead. That book is at 299. Oh, the offer is the thought.

No, partnerships is 99. Isn't mistakes 299 now. And partnerships is 99.

They're both. They're both 299. But the offer would be the same.

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Yeah, okay. Yeah, you're right. It is 299. See, I learned something new today. My apologies. Let me make this right for you. Actually, Shannon already made it right for you, so there you go. Yeah, yeah, we would. We really would love to get some reviews on there and it would be great to have them come from you. So 299 that the offer stands for.

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Yeah. And we'll obviously put a link in the show notes for this. So.

Yeah.

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Well, you can, you know, quickly find it. Business, show, co guides. It'll take you right there to both of them. And we appreciate your support. It's one way that you can really help out the show.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I had a computer issue with Apple a number of years ago. I mean, I've had A lot of Apple computers, and actually, I've had several issues, but with one of them, you know, this computer, it had been in the shop, in and out, in and out. And I finally was on with, you know, every company has their own version of what I call the customer service ninja department. Some companies call it the Office of the President. Apple calls it customer relations. But it's the people that step in when things have gone sideways at big companies, at smaller companies, you usually just get the CEO, which is why some companies call it the Office of the President. Right. But, you know, it's the people that are there to step in to solve the problems and sort of be that advocate. Right. When things have gone sideways with sort of the, you know, the existing customer service infrastructure. And I was on the phone with one of them, and they were, as they are trained to do, they were very much on my side. Okay. Yep. Wow, that sounds terrible. Oh, I'm so sorry you've had to go through all this, all of the things we just talked about. And then they did. The final thing you talked about, Shannon, was this woman asked me, she said, okay, well, what would you like me to do for you? And it wasn't an exasperated, well, what do you want me to do? It wasn't that. It was very much a sincere, what would you like me to do? But it also was very clear. Like, she made it clear I had to be the one to ask for something. She wasn't going to sit there and offer solutions.

Oh, I see.

And it felt almost like that was a policy, that she had a lot of latitude, but she couldn't be the one to come up with the ideas. Now, maybe that was the case. That's how it felt to me at the time. But in looking back at it, this may have just been her tactic to ensure that whatever was put on the table was something I was going to buy into. If I put an ID on the table and then a month later realize, you know, I should have gotten more out of this, well, now it's my fault. I didn't put more on the table. I put this on the table. And so I said, I really think at this point, you know, I was sort of taken aback at the time. I was like, wow, that's an interesting question. Like, I was hoping she was just going to suggest that she replace my computer for me, but she asked me to say it. So I said, okay, well, I'll say it like, I think this computer should be replaced. She says, I agree. Let me start the paperwork for that. To happen. And this was like a three year old computer. They replaced it with a brand new model. I mean, it worked out great. But by having me suggest that it had me 100% bought into the process. There was no way I was going to argue with the results of this.

That's right. And I think you'll find is most people are reasonable. Most people don't want the, the, you know, the moon and you know, and there are obviously sometimes people can ask for certain things that you cannot do, but if you, they may be a, you know, a larger ask that they're looking for, but maybe they're willing to accept a little less. Yeah. And, and, but getting the key is getting them involved in the process is, you know, critically important so they feel like part of the solution. It just works every time. All these techniques focus on first and foremost de escalating the conflict so the customer feels like, well, there really is no conflict because they're on my side. At least this particular customer service person is on my side.

Yep.

You're going to find common ground. You're going to show empathy and you're going to get. The customer's going to get back on your side because you've gone around to the other side of the table with them and you're working in their, truly in their best interest. It may also be in the best interest of the company as well. Usually it is. Sure. You just don't want to get in this bad loop of like I used to. I had a customer service guy. He was great, but he had this deep sense of what justice was.

Yeah, you got to give up on that in those scenarios.

I just said, hey, you know, and he would, he would really lament the fact and he felt like he wasn't, you know, he. Did I lose you, Shannon?

Oh, you're back. Okay. You cut out for a split second there.

Yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

But, but you know, this guy was great, but he just felt like he was always, he had to fight for the company side all the time. And I just said, hey, you know, you've got to let that go because you've got to fight for the customer. You know, it's not always right or there is not a necessarily a right or wrong. You're going to have customers that, that you know, try to game the system or do whatever, but those are few and far between and you just have to set this, this bar high for how you're going to take care of them. And this person eventually moved out of the customer service department because it just Wasn' Wasn't for them. It wasn't for them, but they did great at some other stuff they had them to do. But, you know, speaking about employees, one of the things that's, I think, very important when you train customer service people to deal with these issues is you really have to let them know exactly what they can and cannot do. You know, they need to get this understanding of what you want, how you want the customer handled. But then you got to give them leeway. You have to give them autonomy.

Me.

To make decisions. So you have to let them know how far you can go. Is there a dollar in our case?

If you can give it a dollar amount in those scenarios, that makes life super easy. If you tell your employees you've got $250 per customer to solve the problem, do whatever you need to that, like you said, that gives them that autonomy. It empowers them to be that problem solver. Like you said at the beginning, I'm going to be the one to solve this for you. Well, if your employees don't feel like they have any power, it's really hard for them to say that and mean it. Because they can't mean it.

They can't do it. They can't mean it. Yeah, yeah. And when you, the flip side of that too is you have to back them up. If, if somebody just continually escalates and has to go to another manager. And then eventually, you know, maybe it would come to me if they were just like, I want to speak to the owner and I'm not going to be happy to. Okay. You have to be confident enough to step in and go through the process and back up your customer service people because you need to build that loyalty with your employees as well. If you override them every time somebody escalates them or escalates the problem, it's not going to be a good experience because they're not going to trust you. Now, sometimes people make mistakes in how they solve problems, and that's okay.

Yep.

But it's better to, in my opinion, to just punt, you know, move on from that, but then sit down with that person and explain. Here's where I, I believe the, the, you know, the problem kind of broke down or how it happened, and this is the mistake and this is what I would do something different.

You should post mortem that stuff all the time. Even if, I would say, especially if it's you, the owner, that wound up having to solve the thing, get the, the, you know, the key players involved. And, and even if one of the, you know, one of your best customer service, you know, minded people wasn't involved in that process. If it just got to you without going through them or something, get them involved too and then tell them, okay, here's what happened, here's what I did. And encourage people to give you feedback too and tell you, actually, did you try this way? You could have done this. That's how as a company a, you get better at this particular skill, but you also build it into the culture that we're here to serve our customers and that, you know, going back to the beginning, every business is the customer service business. And if you're not talking about how to serve your customers routinely, then somebody else will do it for you.

Yeah. And you're going to waste so much of your time getting involved in those things if you don't set these parameters. You know, here's how much you can use to solve. Here's the maximum shipping type you can use if you're shipping a product. You know, because they have to feel confident. You know, the other thing about your, your customer service, whether it's you or, you know, your employees, you're going to be solving lots of problems via email or chat. You know, it's pretty common right now. So I think, you know, it's very important to address that as its own unique situation because you know, you're, you really have to compel the message and you have to make the message remarkable when you send it to your customer or they're just used to getting blown off and they're used to reading this, this, these crap messages and responses and you only have a few seconds to grab their attention. My advice and what we've always tried to do is come up, you know, you should be looking at that two token concept. Oh, you know, if you made a problem, I mean, if you made a mistake, you know, like the first thing, you may need to apologize. Oh, oh, no, I'm so sorry you had this experience. I'm here to solve this problem for you. And that, that should be like the first sentence because that may be all they read.

Yeah, right.

I mean, remember, we're a headline driven society. Right. Especially right now. So you've got to grab their attention quickly and, and get them to just take a deep breath. And then I would suggest you, you know, again, think about how you can make that message remarkable because you know, what happens if you have email and, and I would suggest, and not require or rely on your, your employees to be typing out, you know, witty and remarkable responses. You need to use like text expander, which you know and love if you've ever listened to the show before, to craft some remarkable emails. We used to have a thing where after we apologize for the problem, you know, if it was a shipping issue, you know, we always used to say heads will roll in our shipping department. And you know, it's extreme, but it's kind of funny. It's kind of Monty Pythonish type of thing. You know, heads will roll. You know, rest assured, heads will roll. Because what does that even mean? Right, right.

Well, I mean it means, it means you're going to decapitate people.

That's right.

But. But you're not. But. No, but like that sort of that, you know, that going overboard like that brings them in like, okay. And, and you might actually get some customers to say, well wait, you know, it's not that bad.

Yes, yes.

Now you've won the two tokens thing because you've taken the it's awful token. I'm literally like, not literally, but I'm saying that I'm gonna go to decapitate someone and say, well, you know, it's not that bad. It was just two days.

They often be like, oh, don't, don't fire anybody. Yeah, this thing happens. So you, you have been successful at de escalating that immediately with some kind of humorous remark. Maybe it's a bit extreme, but it gets your attention.

All those magic phrases. And when I ran, you know, I guess even when I had my lawn care business, which is my first one, but certainly when we were, when I ran the office at Computer Nerds in Texas, my partner Lee and I, we both loved these kinds of things and we started calling them magic phrases and we made a list of them. And it was pre text expander days, folks. You know, this was 1995, but 96 maybe so. But it was like we, when we had these posted by every phone everywhere so that if you were on the phone, you could just be looking at this list and be like, ah, yeah, okay, I can say that thing to someone. I can say this thing to someone. And those magic phrases help your business big time.

It's tremendous. Yeah. And when you, when you have an email like that, you will be amazed at how many people, especially now, will post it on social media. Be like, check this out, look at this email I got back from this company when I had a problem and they up screwed. You know they're not even talking about the mistake you made anymore.

Nope. They're the way you're champion.

That's Correct. They're. Your, your response is so remarkable that they are sharing it with their network and talking about how great your service is.

Yeah.

And most people immediately forget that you made a mistake. Right. But the fact that you owned it and you, and we're going to get this taken care of for you and you had a witty response or a self effacing response. So either you write these templates or find somebody in your company or hire, you know, somebody on Fiverr, you know where. But that, that can write, help you craft remarkable and interesting emails, you know, and set them up as templates for everyone to use. You need to, and this was hard for me when I first started getting into, you know, lots of email communication. But you need to embrace exclamation points. And, and I, I may not like it.

You need to have a personality. Like, however you accomplish that for you is fine because your business doesn't need to be like my business or your business. Right. Like, but, but yeah, for me, I found exclamation points, you know, like smiley emojis like that.

You have to. Yeah. And it may not seem, I don't.

Know, it doesn't seem professional. Right?

Yeah, maybe, but man, it works. And when you're, you know, when you show that emoji, emoji with the, the purse, the character slapping their head because you've made a mistake. I mean, again, you, you're, you're building that bridge of trust with your customer. You're, you're being remarkable. So they're going to remember, especially when it's in writing, you know, because they're going to show other people or it's, you know, make it out there. So, you know, you're, you're, you got to work at it, come up with some sort of templates. And, and the other thing is, we talked about this a little bit, but I think you mentioned in the past, Dave, is define what the escalation path is all. So it's the same every time. So it's not a handcrafted thing. This, if I can't, if this customer just is not. If I'm not doing it right, what do I do? You know, who do I talk to? And also know when it ends, Right?

Yes.

Know when it's, you have to get, there's going to be times when you get to a point where you're going to have to tell a customer, hey, I'm gonna just refund you. I'm gonna take the product back. I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna make you Completely whole.

Maybe that was Jean Luig essay's thing. Right? Like, you know what? Yeah, you know, let's just take the computers back from you. We'll. We'll pay you back. It's fine. Most of the time, people would be like, whoa, whoa, wait, I want the two.

Yeah, that's right. Wait a minute. And, and I, I would have to have a conversation. Not, not too. Certainly not too often. But there are times that I would say, look, I'm gonna make your whole matter of fact, I'm gonna get you your stuff back, and I'm gonna send you a, you know, $50Amazon gift certificate. Because it. We just don't have a fit here. Especially if we have a history in our customer service database that, you know, most of our touch points turned into problems with this customer. We, we're not able to service it even. You know, I'm not saying it's not our fault, but maybe we can't offer the level of service that you're requiring is what I would tell the customer. And off more times than not, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love you guys. This, that. Okay.

I like this idea of offering an Amazon gift card because so many times I'll get offered a gift card at the. Com from the company for themselves. And it's like, wait a minute. You know, we're firing each other here. We've said it's not a good fit. Why are you giving me a credit on, you know, store credit? I don't want store credit. But giving that $50 at Amazon, I mean, it costs you 50 bucks, but it ends the interaction. Like, think about how many more times you're over. You're gonna spend $50 of your own time dealing with that problematic customer, send them 50 bucks, and you do it once and you're done.

And, and that customer is going to. Because it's, it's, it's a bit remarkable. Yes, the customer is going to maybe share that information like, you know, they really screwed up, but I realized they're not a fit for me. I couldn't do it, but they gave me 50 bucks on top of a refund, which is cool. And especially if you've got it in email, you know, form. You know, when they leave reviews, you've got some backup information that you can always like, well, here's actually the thread of what happened. So you just have to have a way to, you know, here's the path that we escalate these two. But also, here's the end. And what do we do at that point? And then you won't see those. You as a business owner, a small business owner, you don't want to be solving those problems. You just, you know, you've probably had enough of it from when you first started the business.

Oh, yeah, you don't need to be there. Yeah, I've got one customer that is not. Things need to end with them, with us. And I'm not. I haven't been handling them. It's been, you know, they're a customer of one of my sales reps. But it's been a problem for, you know, the last several weeks routinely. And I think it's time to. And they keep coming back like, oh, would you just do this for me? Because if I don't, I, you know, I'm going to be in trouble with, you know, their, their client or boss or whatever it is. And it's like, yeah, you know what? That's on you. Now for the third time, here's 50 bucks at Amazon to soothe your troubles and you solve your own problem going forward.

Yeah, yeah. Because the cost of trying to continually solve those problems with problem customers, so to speak, over and over again, it's huge. Very expensive.

Well, it's opportunity cost is what it is. It's like, you know, I always say, look, we would service every customer as much as they need if only we had unlimited time. But. And this is a great way to sort of frame it for your staff. But unfortunately, as we all know, we don't have unlimited time. So we have to choose where we spend that commodity time. Sometimes that means we can't work with customer A because we're working with customer B. And we just need to be fair to customer A and let them know we're not working with them in this scenario.

And you will build. I mean, it goes so far with your company culture and your employee loyalty. When they see you back them up, when something does escalate and you look and go, oh, yeah, you did everything you're supposed to do. Look at, you know, you did this, you did that. It's like, well, this. We just don't have a fit here. I'm going to authorize your supervisor or your manager to step in and just punt or I will, you know, step in and do it.

I got you.

And yep, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to cover you. Because it's not. The customer is not always right. And I just don't believe it. That your employees are critically important. Customers come and go. Yes, you Got to treat them nice. But there are going to be some of them that you have to fire.

You got to cut loose. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, before we wrap up, I do want to point to a show that I think ties into this one really well and that's episode 224. It was all about positive influence by pacing and leading, which is some persuasion techniques that I think really go hand in hand with this customer service concept, with the two tokens concept. So we'll put a link to the show notes or 19 and I would suggest you, if you missed that one or maybe even you want to refresh.

Which episode was that? You said 224, but I don't think that's the one you meant.

What did I got positive influence. Let me find out. Pacing and leading. That's in my notes, but let's see if I've got that wrong.

Pacing leading. 225.

225 off by one.

Story of my life.

Yeah. So yeah, we'll put a, a link to that in the show notes. Go and listen to it and, and let us know what you think. Feedbackusinessshow.co. and as well, please leave us a review at your podcast directory of choice. If you're listening to it on Apple, you know, leave us a five star review. Let us know what's going on. We want to hear from you. It's the, the only type of message that we get from the show is when you speak up.

Yeah, no, those reviews are huge. They mean a lot for, for us and for you and, and please go review our partnerships book. That's, that's, that, that's our request for today. So if you, if you can, if you've got something, please do it. That would, it means a lot to us. Yep.

Reach out to us. We'll give you a refund if you like. And you also, what you get in there is the downloadable template to the famous working agreement that we've talked about so much and really can save your ass when things go wrong.

Yeah.

If, if they do with a partnership.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much, folks. And, and we'll see you next week. Keep living that charmed life and be good to your customers. Be good to your.