Customer Service by Captain Obvious

As we get ever nearer the holiday season, you may be starting to see an increase in sales, and many will be from new customers. If yours is their first internet purchase, you have the unique opportunity to create a lifelong customer by making their first online shopping experience a positive one. How can you do this? Good packaging and prompt shipping are important, but what they’ll really remember is the way they were treated.

While customer service for internet shoppers is, in principle, much the same as for face-to-face customer service, there are a few important differences. First, customers can’t see your face, and if you’re corresponding by e-mail, they can’t hear your voice either. Before you start calling me Captain Obvious, understand why this is important. On a conscious level, your customers understand that they’re dealing with other humans at the other end of their order, but psychologically, it’s very easy for them (and you!) to start thinking of the other party as a robot without feelings or a conscience. Your challenge is to show them a real person is handling their oh-so-important order, and to always treat them the way you’d want your family treated at the little hardware store down the block. The best way to show this is through your customer service practices. Having worked in some form of customer support for the last 8 years, I’ve picked up a few tried and true methods for making customers feel valued when they can’t look me in the eye.

Show Empathy

Your customer spent their hard-earned money to buy your product, and it didn’t go the way they expected. Maybe something went wrong in shipping. Maybe there was an error on your end. Or maybe they just have unrealistic expectations. Regardless of the reason, they’re unhappy and contacting you to fix it, and this is your opportunity to make it a positive experience. But this is the point where it may get difficult. Your customer is probably upset, and may be rude. Instead of reacting in kind, think of this person as someone you know – your grandmother, nephew, or next-door neighbor. They’re contacting a faceless company who has their money, and they didn’t get what they thought they were getting. Understand why they are frustrated, and your compassion will show in your response.

The Customer is Always Right?

Ok, we all know that’s not true in the real world. Sometimes what the customer expects isn’t realistic. But give them the benefit of the doubt. Chances are they honestly believe they’ve been wronged. Show them that you’re interested in finding a way to make it right. Sometimes it takes creative solutions; not every customer will be happy with the same fix. If they needed their raft for a trip to the lakes and are leaving tomorrow, shipping them another is a great show of goodwill, but may not be the best solution for their situation. Make sure they are happy with your proposed resolution before proceeding.

As tempting as it may be to prove to the buyer why they are wrong and you are right, it’s not worth losing a customer to make a point. It’s better to take a slight loss and gain a repeat customer.

Respond to Every Contact Promptly

Check your e-mail at least once per day, and respond as soon as possible to any customer inquiries or complaints, even if it’s only to let them know you’re looking into it and will get back to them. Let them know that their concern is important to you. If a customer isn’t able to get a resolution from you, they’re more likely to dispute the charge with their credit card company or file an A-to-z Guarantee claim, which will have a negative impact on your seller account.

Attitude Matters!

The way you are perceived by a customer depends greatly on your attitude. It’s easy for a buyer to justify anger at a seller if the seller’s responses reflect anger back. By being helpful, calm, and professional, regardless of the customer’s tone, you will help them understand that problems happen, but you will try your best to make it right. When a smile and a handshake aren’t an option, remembering these key things will show the customer that the service they get from you is even better than the mall!

~ Kelley R.

Comments

[George Hallak]

How can a merchant make and send a "Discount Coupon" to a buyer, which is unique to his account or WBA, and can be applied (or not) on the future purchase?

This is better than just making an adjustment refund on the order transaction afterwards.

Thank you,

George
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[stephen]

I have to agree with just about everything here, and would like to add a few more tips.

Sergeant Obvious (The captain's lesser-known counterpart) says: "Don't confirm an order until it actually ships. If you find you don't have stock, that's a guaranteed negative." Seriously, I've read feedback, and that seems to be a leading cause.
And when a customer does have "unreasonable expectations" it takes a lot of tact to explain why they got what they ordered in a respectable time frame. Try it as simply and as friendly as possible, and offering a future discount/partial refund/genuine-sounding apology couldn't hurt matters.

[jkarpe]

"Check your e-mail at least once per day, and respond as soon as possible to any customer inquiries or complaints, even if it’s only to let them know you’re looking into it and will get back to them."

Two things about this:

1. Checking your email once a day should be the barest of minimums. You will find that as things wind there way in closer to the end of December, the emails you are getting will sound more strident. There will be a lot of people concerned about time sensitive shipments on last minute orders and waiting up to 24 hours to respond will do little more than pull you a 1 or 2 Feedback.

2. Sending an email to notify them you are looking into an issue and will get back to them should be a tactic used sparingly. If you are going to send an email like this, take the time to explain to the customer what you are doing. Such as, you can consider, "I am contacting UPS to verify where this package is" or " Am going to check our inventory to make verify what item we shipped you." Leaving customers hanging with a "I'll get back to you" will leave a bad taste in their mouths.

[Ben Y.]

Good post. Please have more like these coming.

One issue: In the RSS feed (at least in google reader), every time the ['] symbol (without the brackets; such as can't, won't, and so on) shows up in the feed, it shows up as [???]. For example:
"I can???t and won???t tolerate such posts."

Please do have this corrected.
Thanks and great work meanwhile.