Smart Marketing Tip To Keep Your Customers Happy

Susan Oakes
12 comments

Two of the keys for marketing success is to keep your key customers happy and the way you give customer service.

This is obvious, however many of you are missing a simple opportunity and you may not realise it.

It all has to do with customer complaints and how you manage the experience for your customers.

Whether you sell a product or service at one time or another a mistake will be made. It could be in a production batch of a product, or when you are delivering a service. As human beings we are not perfect.

How you handle the complaint via your marketing activities can mean a big difference to your business and customer relationships.

An example of how not to deal with a customer complaint is in a blog post by Sarah Mitchell of GlobalCopywriting. The problem product was a CD player in a car. A small cost when compared to the total price of a car. Sarah had to fight to get it fixed and the experience was made worse when she received a token promotional voucher.

So, how can you turn a customer complaint and the experience  into an advantage for your business?

It can be quite simple really. Give them something for FREE very quickly.

Of course you need to fix the the problem quickly. However, as you review the problem and find a solution you can enhance the customer experience with a simple marketing action. You are given an opportunity to strengthen your customer relationships.

You hear all the time about offering prospective customers something for free to gain their business, however this is often forgotten when current customers make a complaint.

Customers who complain are actually valuable because they have taken the time to talk to, write or email you. It really does not matter who was right or wrong. It is all about making sure they feel valued so they continue to buy your products or services.

What you need to consider

  • Work out what you can offer, whether it is a replacement product or something related. For example in Sarah’s case as they had to replace the CD player for free, they could have provided a gift voucher for her to buy a few CDs as the player was being fixed.
  • If you sell a service, this can be trickier but it still applies. You could offer the part of the service they thought there was a mistake with.  Or look at related services or a value add that that you could offer that they would want.
  • If you provide a monthly or yearly subscription, consider extending it by one month.
  • If you have employees give them the authority to offer the free product or service to customers when they are talking with them.

If you have managed to get the customers you want for your business look at this as an investment to strengthen the relationship rather than a cost to your business.

Over to you, how do you handle customer complaints?

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12 Responses to Smart Marketing Tip To Keep Your Customers Happy
  1. Paul Hassing
    March 2, 2010 | 8:39 am

    Great article, Susan. As usual, it all rings true. I liked the reference to Sarah’s drama. I remember the blow by blow being reported on Twitter. Firms need to realise there’s a BIG audience for these things now. ‘Be Shabby At Your Peril’, could be a motto for the new decade. Best regards, P. :)

    Reply
    • Susan Oakes
      March 2, 2010 | 9:51 am

      Hi Paul,

      I like the motto and I missed most of Sarah’s tweets. Have you ever had to handle a mistake you made with a client.

      Reply
  2. Sarah Mitchell
    March 2, 2010 | 8:13 pm

    Hi Susan,

    Lovely to see a reference to my own post and validation I’m not completely off my rocker. That was exactly how the service department was making me feel – like I had a problem.

    You know what, they could have done a very valuable thing that wouldn’t have cost them anything. Not once in any of my debacle did anyone say “We’re sorry this has happened to you. We’ll fix it.” Those two sentences would have put my mind at rest that I wasn’t nuts and someone was hearing my complaint.

    I had a very savvy manager once that loved customer service problems for the precise reason you use to close your post. He used to say “An unhappy customer is a chance for us to show how good we really are.” His opinion is customers expected everything to do right and when it did we were only meeting expectation. When something goes wrong, a customer isn’t surprised when things go from bad to worse. If you fix a problem, you usually EXCEED the expectations of your customer.

    His counsel was always to embrace problems as opportunities.

    Great post, Susan.

    Reply
    • Susan Oakes
      March 2, 2010 | 10:04 pm

      Hi Sarah,

      Thanks for giving me the idea for the post and you are definitely not off your rocker. Your manager was indeed correct and sounds pretty smart. Today it seems we shy away and get defensive when someone has a complaint. I am not sure why as it only makes it worse for all.

      Hope the CD player is now working well.

      Regards,
      Susan

      Reply
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