Tag Archives: poor customer service

Superior Customer Service

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As we close in on the Holiday Shopping Season, customer service becomes more and more important. That’s not to say customer service was unimportant prior to now; it’s just that most businesses –– e-commerce ventures as well as brick and mortar stores –– see a large increase in consumer activity during the Holiday Shopping Season. Any customer service mistakes that get made in this time period end up being magnified due to the time of year.

As part of its ongoing series about Holiday Shopping, The Official Merchant Services Blog wanted to take a moment to examine customer service.

By The Numbers

It’s important to not let customer service fall to the wayside in favor of more direct methods of obtaining profits. While marketing campaigns and aggressive sales techniques can see quick results in black and white numbers, customer service is the foundation for maintaining a long-term sales relationship. The old adage about how it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an old one is what’s at work here. A 2010 MediaPost report indicated that U.S. businesses lose approximately $83 billon each year as a result of poor customer service. The report also indicated that 71 percent of U.S. customers have ended a business relationship based on poor customer service. The report also noted that poor customer service has an impact on a business’ competition –– the study cited by MediaPost found that 61 percent of customers surveyed said that they take their business to a competitor when they end a relationship with a company due to poor customer service.

Do Not Panic

While those numbers from that survey are compelling, our first bit of advice is: Do Not Panic. Just like Customer Service is a long-term relationship building tool, it’s also an aspect of your business that you can take your time building. So even if you hit a few customer service snags on Black Friday, or there’s some pitfalls for your e-commerce business’ customer service on Cyber Monday, it’s not time to panic. Take it easy, and keep the focus on the long-term goal of quality customer service.

Anecdotes and Analysis

We’ve all experienced horror stories that back up the numbers cited above. It could be something as simple as walking into a store looking to purchase a specific product and not receiving any assistance. I’ve had this happen to me quite a lot when walking into a specific retail chain near where I live. I’ve gone there multiple times looking to purchase printer cartridges. And each time I have trouble finding the specific type I’m looking for and it seems I can never get an employee to even ask me if I need help. It’s made me stop going there and I now buy my printer supplies online instead.

What horror stories have you experienced? What’s the worst customer service incident you’ve encountered? Has it affected your approach to your own business and the customer service you provide?

Make Good Customer Service a Habit

Host Merchant Services makes customer service a part of their core business philosophy. It’s part of the Payment Network Provider’s overall goal to bring trust to the payment industry. And it’s part of why this merchant services blog exists. The company wants to share information with customers as well as potential customers, and take the time to explain the confusing aspects of the payment processing industry. Customer Service defines the approach to the customer relationship; it’s why Host Merchant Services makes guarantees such as no contracts and no termination fees; it’s the basis for how Host Merchant Services offers free terminals to our merchants.

Merchant Services and Payment Network Providers need quality Customer Service

Defining Good Customer Service

Using that background in customer service focus, Host Merchant Services offers some easy tips to help you enhance your customer service:

Make a Good First Impression

A customer’s first contact with your business should be a positive experience, no matter if that contact is a telephone call, an internet click through or face to face.

Real People Over Automated Responses

Contact between customers and potential customers hinges on interaction between real people. This applies mainly to the way your business takes phone calls or handles internet contact. Try to cut down on phone trees and automated telephone recordings with confusing menus. For your e-commerce businsess, make sure your website is designed well and easy to navigate. Give your visitors a convenient hub to continue to visit. And make sure you clearly mark how to contact you for customer service related issues.

Be honest, Offer Facts

Do not sugarcoat things when dealing with your customers. While it may be uncomfortable to deliver bad news, customers and potential customers prefer honest and factual information. Trying to sugarcoat things makes them feel like you are being manipulative and will have a negative impact.

Get Back To People

Follow up with people who contact you. Delays in returning voicemails, neglecting e-mails, not responding to posts to your twitter, are all negatives in customer service. If someone takes the time to try to contact you, the best thing you can do to maintain good customer service is to get back to them promptly.

Work With Your Customers

When you do interact with your customers via phone calls, e-mails or face to face, remember to work with them –– not against them. Listen to what they are telling you. They contacted you with a concern, so take in their information. Be polite. Most customer service issues revolve around customer complaints. But if you listen to them and are polite with them, you take a huge step forward toward getting their issue resolved. Customers want to be heard, and they want you take action on their behalf. Even if you can’t do exactly what they want, the process is there for you to help them feel like they are valuable to your business.

Stick To Your Plan

That’s the basics of it. It’s really just a process that involves you interacting with your customers on a human level. Getting back to them promptly. Giving them your focused attention. And doing what you can to make them feel like they are valuable to your business. This is all about building a long-term business relationship. So while you may experience an increase in the static you get from irate customers through November and December, if you stick to a plan that focuses on customer service and relationship building, you will navigate through the storm of the Holiday Shopping Season.

We want to hear from you. What does good customer service mean to you? Better yet, what does it mean to your customers? When they define good customer service, does your business immediately come to their minds? What are some tips you would offer for obtaining excellent customer service?

Customer Service vs. Marketing? [2023 Update]

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Much of the content I provide for The Official Merchant Services Blog I write like a news story. The goal there is to provide quality, insightful information on topics that relate to what we feel our visitors and merchants can use in their business. But this is still a blog. And today I’m going to take a more casual, more blog-like approach. In the end though it’s all going to come back to a very relevant point about customer service, e-commerce, and the holiday shopping season.

Good Call Gone Bad

I have ended my relationship with the Apple iPhone. Which is a pretty significant departure for me. I’ve had an iPhone since 2007. While I wasn’t the first in line to get one, I was still a very early convert and had one a couple of months after its launch. I “wow-ed” my friends with its touch screen technology, and became a loyal iPhone customer all the way up until this week.

What Caused Me to Leave the iPhone?

Poor customer service is what caused me to switch to a different smartphone plan and leave the iPhone. Here’s what happened:

I hadn’t upgraded my iPhone in awhile. I was still using the 3G. My battery was getting spotty. My internet connection through it was definitely showing its age. It was time for me to upgrade. And conveniently enough the iPhone 4S had just been released. I thought this was an amazing opportunity to upgrade right before Christmas. And luckily (or so I thought) for Apple, I had two phones to upgrade. I had purchased an iPhone as a Christmas present for my mom a couple of years back. And it was on my phone plan, and she was really unhappy with her internet speed on the phone. Win-Win for the Apple store right? Two phones to upgrade.

One Step Forward, One Step Out the Door

So I went into my local Apple store Monday evening looking to upgrade. At $200 per upgrade, I was basically walking through the front door with at the very least $400 to spend on their products.

That’s when things got all bizarro-world. Up was down, North was South, and making sales was not the salesperson’s goal this day. I was told that I could not upgrade my phone that day. That I had to do one of two things:

  1. Log onto their web-site and purchase the phone online directly from the apple store’s site. I was told this would take 1 to 2 weeks to deliver.
  2. Log onto their web-site and make a reservation to pick up a phone the next day. I was informed that I had a very specific window in which I could make this reservation (between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. at night). I was told that I would run into high internet traffic and would likely have to refresh the page multiple times. I may not make it into the reservation quickly enough because of this (The salesperson compared it to bidding on something on eBay but in my head it sounded more like trying to obtain playoff tickets before they sell out). And I was told I had a very specific window of opportunity to make it into the store the next day to pay for my reserved iPhone.

And after explaining all that, I was ushered out of the store. Just like that, $400 walked out of their store.

Cool Like That

I have to ask: What is wrong with that business model? I mean, I fully understand there’s some marketing tactics being employed right now by Apple. Part of what makes Apple the brand that it is stems from their marketing of “cool.” That their style drives the demand in their product and that they can give that aura of being too cool to worry about beating their competitors with boring numbers. But how far does that extend? Is it a good move to let $400 walk right out of the door? What kind of customer service is that?

To get back to my misadventure, after walking out of the store with no service, I did indeed go home and jump onto the web that night. But instead of visiting Apple’s web site, I went to AT&T’s site –– my phone service and data plan provider. I just wasn’t even going to try and deal with Apple’s site. Especially with all of the obstacles they put in front of me. I did note that AT&T’s site would give me an upgrade to an iPhone 4S and promised 2-day  priority shipping. But I didn’t really investigate the details of what they were going to offer. I was that annoyed with the Apple Store’s treatment of me. I had been a loyal customer of this product for 4 years. I’d upgrade multiple times in the past. And never once experienced anything like this. Apple did not want my money. So as fascinated as I was by AT&T’s offer, it was time to move on.

Ex-Phone to the Next Phone

I upgraded my service plan and smartphone to a Samsung Galaxy S II. For the exact same price as the iPhone 4S.

My phone arrived last night. And now for the first time since 2007 I’m not using an iPhone. It all comes down to the customer service.

I’ve read stories explaining that demand for the iPhone 4S is higher than supplies. So that’s why this reservation process exists. However I question the circumstances that led up to this situation existing. The iPhone 4S was released in time for the holiday shopping season of 2011. The iPhone is an industry leader. And this is one of Apple’s biggest releases of the year. What prompted them to under produce?

I tend to think it’s part of their “oh so cool” marketing strategy. By under producing they help continue to stoke the flames of demand. It’s this slick new gadget from the hip tech company. And you want it even more because you can’t have it.

The Bottom Line

There is a lot of power in that strategy. But as I said to a friend of mine the other day at lunch, Microsoft will stay ahead of Apple on a lot of things simply because Microsoft would rather have my $400, and your $400 and everyone else’s $400. They’d rather make the sale. Customer service wins out over cool branding and hip marketing. And that’s something very important for merchants to remember heading into the most frenzied portion of the holiday shopping season. The iPhone 4S is trying to be the Tickle-Me-Elmo of the smartphone industry. The must-have/can’t-find item. And I am guessing that in the long-run losing out on my $400 isn’t going to hit them very hard. But that’s not a mistake smaller businesses can make.

It’s All About Service

Customer service is key. With e-commerce being so prevalent, consumers are blitzed by options. They can shop around by clicking from here to there. And your business needs to make an impression on customers. Especially those that walk into your brick and mortar operation with money in hand looking to purchase. If the Apple store had done anything to retain my business, they’d have kept me around for a few more years. Instead they showed me the door. Literally.

The Samsung Galaxy S2

I didn’t just decide to blast Apple without checking around to see what the deal was with this. And I do have a certain level of understanding about how the company has to now deal with their short supply and still move forward with trying to sell the product. I have a friend who went through the reservation process and was as flustered with it as I was just being told about it by the salesperson in the store. I also poked around to find some relevant stories and information on this.

Here’s a Conversation Marketing Blog about trouble with Apple Store customer service. The issue is completely different. But I did get a chuckle out of this image. And it underscores my overall theme here –– Customer Service needs to improve.

That blog led me to this article about Gary Vaynerchuk’s book The Thank You Economy. The book makes “a compelling case for why businesses need to adapt to the new reality that one-way push communications are no longer as effective as building a real, sustainable relationship with your customers.”

Which gets round to the whole reason this story exists on The Official Merchant Services Blog: Quality customer service is at the very heart of the Host Merchant Services business philosophy. As our CEO often says, “You stay with us because you’re happy.” It’s just that simple. No contracts, no termination fees, no tricks. Host Merchant Services will not run you off the way the Apple Store feels it can with customers who are looking to spend hundreds of dollars. It’s not part of the HMS philosophy.