CHAPTER 10
The Wrap-Up
ALL THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, including difficult customer transactions. And the way you end these situations is often very important. If everyone is all smiles at the end of a tough customer situation, it may not matter how hard they fought with you. By contrast, a bad ending can lead to hard feelings, further complaints, or even the whole nightmare starting all over again.
Wrapping up with difficult customers involves specific skills that leave them feeling better and prepared to move on or take the next steps. In this chapter, we focus on three techniques you can use to bring heated situations to a successful end: using a “verbal receipt” to summarize the transaction, normalizing the situation, and reaffirming the customer relationship. Together they can send you and the customer away smiling.
Understanding Good Closings
In an ideal world we would make all customers happy, and then they would shake our hands and walk away satisfied. Reality often tells another story, however. Some of your customers will have acted in ways that positively embarrass them, or leave both of you in a less-than-have-a-nice-day frame of mind.
In my view, these are perhaps the most important situations to bring to a positive close. All of us are skilled at rationalizing our own behavior, and the customer’s impression of us and our business is largely formed by how the transaction ends.
Once when I was young and having one of my first out-of-town job interviews, I had a misunderstanding at a hotel. My wife asked if she could stay in our room while I was off with the interviewer. They said OK. Then when I checked out that afternoon, they charged us for a second night because she had stayed long past the checkout time. This would have been a large sum of money for us at the time, and a heated discussion ensued about who said what and when. Eventually, the hotel gave in and reversed the charge.
Was I a difficult customer that day? Probably. Was I wrong? Certainly in their minds. But in hindsight, I realize that my future business at this entire hotel chain hinged on how I was treated in that moment. Had the manager grudgingly met my demands and rudely dismissed me, I would probably have never darkened their door again. Instead, he shook my hand, told me he understood my situation, and wished me a nice day. Problem solved.
We each have a built-in advantage in trying to bring heated situations to a successful conclusion: We have all been there ourselves. Few if any of us have escaped the experience of being an angry customer. As a result, we know firsthand what a publicly humiliating experience it can be, even if we ultimately get our way. The skills discussed in this chapter will help you make things end much better for your own customers when they get angry. Let’s look at how each of them works.
Give a “Verbal Receipt”
For most retail purchases, it feels strange not getting a physical receipt. This receipt serves as an acknowledgment that the transaction took place and validates what you are getting in return for your money. A “verbal receipt” can serve much the same purpose for your customers, especially when things have been challenging.
A verbal receipt is a recap of what has happened between you and the customer and what will happen from here. It is a proactive summary that goes over the steps in detail. Here are some samples of good verbal receipts:
“Based on what we discussed, this problem should be covered as long as you have a proof of purchase from within the last ninety days. Once you come back with a copy of your receipt, we will expedite the repair of this hard drive.”
“Our maintenance team will arrive at your house between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. tomorrow. If there are any delays, or if you have any questions, I would like you to call our operations manager. Here is a card with her name and phone number.”
“Given everything you went through, I’m glad we could arrange at least a partial refund for this. Is there anything else we can help you with?”
A good verbal receipt does much more than just clarify your resolution to a problem. It makes you seem engaged, competent, and concerned for the customer. A more subtle point is that verbal receipts can be emotional as well as factual: They represent a good opportunity to thank customers, apologize to them, or express any other authentic feelings that help people feel better. Done well, these summaries substantially increase the odds of ending things on a good note.
Normalize the Situation
At the end of a tough transaction, one of the most powerful things you can do is make the other person feel OK about his or her behavior. Even when—listen carefully—this behavior was less than ideal. Not in a saccharine, it’s-perfectly-all-right-that-you-were-a-jerk kind of way, but rather as a communion of equals: a reaffirmation that normal, healthy people get frustrated and even overinvested in customer situations.
In Chapter 7, we discussed the technique of normalizing a situation, where you validate it as being common for yourself and others. Here are some examples of using it at the end of a transaction:
“I’m glad we were able to work this out. No one likes to go away unhappy.”
“If it were my child, I would have stood up for her interests, too.”
“No one wants to pay more than they have to, especially in this economy.”
Some of you may wonder why you should bother to spare the feelings of difficult customers, especially after you have resolved their situation. There are several important reasons why you should at least consider this:
It brings the transaction to a close quickly and peacefully.
It removes the need for difficult customers to defend themselves.
It makes them less likely to complain later about the situation—or about you personally.
It reduces the likelihood they will come back seeking more.
It may preserve their future business.
Above all, people worry that making difficult customers feel better somehow justifies their behavior and perpetuates their being difficult in the future. In reality, the opposite is usually true. Criticizing bad behavior leads people to harden their positions and defend themselves, while respect leads them to be more open to your way of thinking. By making customers feel better about what happened, you help flip their perspective in your favor and usually make them easier to deal with next time.
Reaffirm the Customer Relationship
No matter how nice you might be to a challenging customer, she probably has one remaining concern: that you have her pegged forever after as “that customer” who made your life difficult.
Why should you care about this? Because you often have a chance here to turn a crisis into a profitable opportunity. Many people who lose it in front of customer service professionals are too embarrassed to ever come back again. If you can turn around this feeling and make them feel truly welcome to come back, you have an opportunity to gain both their cooperation and their future business.
Since a customer cannot read your mind, the most powerful signal you can send that the situation is OK is to reaffirm the future of the relationship. Here are some sample statements you could use to do this:
“If you come back next month, we plan to have some of these items on sale.”
“I’m glad we could work this out. It would be great to have you come back and try us again in the future.”
“Next time you are here, feel free to ask for me personally.”
So what if your honest feelings about this customer are more like, “Please don’t go away angry—just go away”? Follow your gut. If your personal radar tells you that a customer is chronically unreasonable, abusive, or threatening, there is no need to invite that person back. But most difficult situations are, at root, moments of humanity that are caused when people do not get what they want. Smooth over these situations, and you can often gain a lasting customer relationship.
Thanking Your Difficult Customers
Small-business owners sometimes wonder how to react after a client has made their lives difficult. How about thanking them?
Business consultant Karlene Sinclair-Robinson found this approach to be successful with one of her clients: “In one case, I went a step further by not just acknowledging the problem, but sending the client a handwritten ‘Thank You’ card for their patience, and for allowing me the opportunity to work on solving their problem.” She noted that her gesture made their working relationship much easier from there: “In the end, the card concept won them over and we were able to change the outcome to their benefit, even with the changes they had to make.”
Thanking people can be a powerful reaffirmation of their worth as customers. More important, it frames any difficulties you may have had in the context of a productive future relationship. And in Sinclair-Robinson’s case, the personal touch of a handwritten note got this client’s attention in a very productive way.
The Right Ending: A Good Beginning
The importance of a good closing often goes far beyond the individual transaction. In a very real sense, the way you wrap things up with customers can turn into part of your brand with the public. It becomes a component of your culture and affects how others perceive you.
When I managed high-volume customer-contact operations, I put a great deal of emphasis on how we finished up with customers. In fact, I considered the way we closed a transaction to be every bit as important as the way we opened it, because final impressions often matter every bit as much as first impressions. It is a strategic tool that dovetails with your overall style with customers.
When customer situations get out of hand, good closings become even more important. Knowing how to wrap up a difficult situation does not just send customers away happier—it builds your own confidence for the future. More important, these skills can become part of a broader approach for managing the life cycle of every customer transaction.
PUTTING LEARNING INTO PRACTICE
1. A customer angrily demanded a refund for a product after going on at great length about how horrible it was. She didn’t realize that you would be more than happy to give her a refund, and now she looks a little embarrassed about her behavior. What do you say?
2. Someone calls your appliance service company and is extremely upset that no one showed up as scheduled the day before to make a repair. After rescheduling the appointment, what do you say before hanging up?
3. A woman purchased several expensive pieces of equipment at your hardware store and was very picky and demanding about everything. You sense that she was getting exasperated with you as she kept pressing you with more questions. What might you say at the end of the transaction to help preserve her future business?