Everyone makes mistakes. Customers know this. How you handle those mistakes is the deciding factor on whether the customer will forgive you and come back, tell their friends about the experience, or heaven forbid, post negative remarks on the Internet about you.
So when should you admit to making a mistake? If you catch the mistake yourself, your best defense is to contact the customer with a resolution before they contact you and ask for one. That puts you in their mind as someone who is attentive to their needs, caring and honest about their experience with you.
Case in point: In early January I went in for what was supposed to be a simple hernia operation, but something went wrong. Apparently there was more damage on the inside than what appeared on the surface. After 6 grueling days of therapy and recovery, I was released from the hospital.
Two weeks later on my follow up visit, I asked the surgeon why the incision was 8 inches instead of 2. He said “I messed up”. I asked him to repeat it, which he did, then smiled. That was supposed to tell me he was kidding, but instead left me thinking he was just trying to diffuse the situation.
There was no explanation though, for the huge bump and numbness on my leg, which has spread to cover the entire thigh. What happens in the operating room when you are sedated? TV shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” show that apparently a lot goes on in there. But my leg? The operation was on my stomach. Was I thrown like a bean bag? Only the surgical team knows for sure and nobody is talking. Did you really think they would admit anything?
I only went back to that surgeon after the first round because he is the only one my doctor recommended, even after I asked for someone else. Will I ever go back? No way! I will find another on my own.
How does that fit in with your own business? Your customers will seek alternative sources and vendors if you screw up so bad that their situation is not resolved. Making jokes about the mistake only makes the situation worse.
Customers remember 2 things:
1) That you either did well
2) Remember that you messed up
When you mess up without fixing it, your customers will tell 7 times more people than those they would when you made things right. They not only will never come back, but recommend others do not use your services either.
I totally agree. It’s good that nothing happened serious after the operation. In business as a whole, it is important to acknowledge your mistake and offer solution. It does not only minimize the negative effect also it will let the customer recognize how they are valued.
Jack Riley
This post is so true. I paid for a service that was supposed to build me a blog that would rank high in the search engines and they promised to have a turnaround of 48 hrs. And they said they would immediately give a refund if the results were not satisfactory. After 3 weeks there was still no blog. Just promises in emails. By this time I was getting annoyed with this and decided to get my money back. They completely ignored my request. Luckily I paid through paypal and set up a dispute to which these people didn’t bother to respond at all. Then paypal decided to refund my money to me because of the lack of response on the sellers part.
So the thing here is that I would never deal with these people again and would certainly tell others not to either. Customers simply should not be ignored nor should you make false claims and promises. This all comes back to them in the end.
This is so true. I am currently dealing with someone who treats their customers with little to no respect – to say the least, and I personally believe it’s my duty to warn other people about him and his business practices before they get into this situation as well. If he just would have dealt with the situation in a professional and courteous manner then I would respect him and his business still. If you are in it for the customers money then you should be in it for the customers.
WOW! I had to read this to my husband, as he had a triple by-pass on the third of January and still suffers a lot of pain in his chest. Even though the doctors said he would feel like a new person in three weeks. When he tells the surgeon and cardiologist about the pain their comment is “this could go on for six months to a year”. Of course, this has caused him to distrust doctors even more than he did before.
Hope your leg is getting better.
Sylvia
I do agree with you Rose.
Itś very important to keep customers happy. The common nature of human is to remember bad better than good.
Thanks for sharing,
I’m sorry to hear of your medical “incident’ and glad you survived it OK. This was an appropriate post. Today I was at a luncheon for over 100 women. It was held at a resort that is struggling. We paid $25 a plate for a spoonful each of tuna, egg, and chicken salad. We all went home hungry. What a horrible PR mistake. Now 100 women will be telling everyone they know of how ripped off they felt. It’s a small town and this place can use all the positive PR they can get. What were they thinking???
Great post. Not to repeat, but I responded here once before along these lines and I believe it all boils down to common courtesy as well. Your “customer” is everyone out there, and not just people who buy something from you, ie a sale gone wrong between the vendor and consumer.
Every contact made is a customer relationship in some form; whatever transpires leaves an impression of some kind. If you owe an apology, an explanation, a refund, or a “thank you” just do it.
Now let’s see, Jim had the botched operation in January. Presumably he told his wife and maybe his kids and relatives, Then he told you and now all your readers….hummm. How many readers are there for this column? Can we guess it is several hundreds, thousands, by now…people who will NEVER do business with that doctor.
By the way, I mangled my left hand and had 5-6 surgeries to at least put it back into a semblance of a hand, but I knew enough to have it done under local anesthetic (I WAS a doctor myself), so I SAW and FELT the results of a doctor who didn’t care. So now I’m a one-handed Internet marketer! How many people have i shown and told about my experience? Hummm….
Rosalind,
I do hope you get to feeling better soon and find a solution to your, uh doctor’s “mess up”.
Sometimes you just can’t make anyone happy no matter how hard you try but if you realize you made a mistake, I believe it’s best to try and rectify the situation ASAP.
Whether everyone is happy or not, at least you know you have done what was right.
Very true, and if I were you, I would convey my concerns about the second doctor to the 1st doctor. How does he know how his patients are treated and whether he should be recommending someone else instead unless he gets feedback? He or she can’t act on what they aren’t told.
Its also a good idea to treat customers well not only to keep them coming back, and recommending you to their friends and colleagues, but because you never know who might help, or hinder, your affiliate career in the future. The first post-college job I had, there was a summer associate who made some very unprofessional ill-advised remarks to a secretary – the secretary repeated them to a senior partner she was friendly with, and that was the only summer associate who did not receive an offer that year. During my sister’s pregnancy and in preparation for her caesarian, one of the surgeons made some extremely hurtful and unprofessional comments to her. Unbeknownst to him, she knew one of the senior administrators at the hospital, and told him of her treatment at the hands of the surgeon in question. The surgeon’s contract with the hospital was coming up for renewal, and it wasn’t renewed, and that doctor will never know that it was his own treatment of a hospital patient that cost him that contract renewal.
So there’s definitely a self-interest component to treating customers and potential customers right. You never know what the repercussions might be.
And strangely enough if you can take a negative situation and handle it well, your customer is likely to love you even more than if you had handled it correctly right from the start.
i bought a filing cabinet online. During transportation it got squashed – not noticeably – just enough that after I removed the wrapping I discover the drawers don’t run as they should.
But between the manufacturer and the transport company they handled it so well so that I ended up more impressed with them than if the initial transaction had gone without a flaw.
Roz, good advice for those running a small business. But too many people just don’t get this. Or they just don’t care. I could write about 10 pages explaining all my bad experiences with doctors, big businesses, small businesses.
This rise of social media has made it even more important to be extra careful of how you deal with customers and clients. Any bad reputation can be multiplied so many times more and on a global basis too. Kind of scary but if we do things well and treat our customers like gold, it can work in a very positive way too.