biophase
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I have a couple of customer service stories. But what I want to stress in these examples is doing some outside of the box thinking, grinding through work, and what it does for your business.
Example 1: Customer leaves a very bad review on my product. Clearly very pissed. The reviewer's name is Jenn XXX.
I respond to the review saying I'm sorry that our product broke and would be happy to send a replacement. 2 weeks go by, no reply. (Could have stopped here, perfectly reasonable to stop here)
Ok, so now what?
Well, I look at the review date. Customer said they've had it for only 1 week and it broke. So, I got through all my orders searching for Jenn XXX.
I search for orders from 1-3 weeks before the review. Finally found her order. Send her a personal email stating the same thing. Again, no reply.
F*ck it, a week later, I ship her a replacement anyway.
Few days ago, her review disappeared. Yay!
Example 2: Customer sends inquiry through website's contact us page asking if we have XXX in a certain size in stock.
I reply to her answer and the email bounced as not a valid email address. Oh well, it's her fault she put in a bad email address right? (Could have stopped here, perfectly reasonable to stop here)
Well, not really. In her mind she asked my company a question and my company just never bothered to respond. That doesn't look good.
So I look at her email it's hername954@comcast.net. The only people I know that use a comcast.net email address are old people who get their emails through their internet provider. So I deduce that this is probably an older lady and that 954 should actually be 1954. It's also very common that people use their birth year in their email.
So I write back to hername1954@comcast.net, a few hours later she responds, and places an order! Success!
This actually happens alot with contact forms. People misspell their emails all the time. I always try to figure out where they could have fat fingered it. I'm successful about 75% of the time.
I write these examples because solving problems in business takes active thinking. We run into problems all the time and you can solve them if you think and actually try to solve them. These 2 examples weren't big critical problems, but doing these little things will train you to solve bigger problems when they come up.
Example 1: Customer leaves a very bad review on my product. Clearly very pissed. The reviewer's name is Jenn XXX.
I respond to the review saying I'm sorry that our product broke and would be happy to send a replacement. 2 weeks go by, no reply. (Could have stopped here, perfectly reasonable to stop here)
Ok, so now what?
Well, I look at the review date. Customer said they've had it for only 1 week and it broke. So, I got through all my orders searching for Jenn XXX.
I search for orders from 1-3 weeks before the review. Finally found her order. Send her a personal email stating the same thing. Again, no reply.
F*ck it, a week later, I ship her a replacement anyway.
Few days ago, her review disappeared. Yay!
Example 2: Customer sends inquiry through website's contact us page asking if we have XXX in a certain size in stock.
I reply to her answer and the email bounced as not a valid email address. Oh well, it's her fault she put in a bad email address right? (Could have stopped here, perfectly reasonable to stop here)
Well, not really. In her mind she asked my company a question and my company just never bothered to respond. That doesn't look good.
So I look at her email it's hername954@comcast.net. The only people I know that use a comcast.net email address are old people who get their emails through their internet provider. So I deduce that this is probably an older lady and that 954 should actually be 1954. It's also very common that people use their birth year in their email.
So I write back to hername1954@comcast.net, a few hours later she responds, and places an order! Success!
This actually happens alot with contact forms. People misspell their emails all the time. I always try to figure out where they could have fat fingered it. I'm successful about 75% of the time.
I write these examples because solving problems in business takes active thinking. We run into problems all the time and you can solve them if you think and actually try to solve them. These 2 examples weren't big critical problems, but doing these little things will train you to solve bigger problems when they come up.
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