Sales Strategy

How Does Your Store Handle Customer Complaints? January 18, 2017 (0 comments)

Merrick, NY—A customer has a valid complaint and you hear about it via social media, Twitter to be exact. What do you do next?

If you are Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and the complaint is about charging your electric Tesla car, you get right on it. In six short days, Musk solved the problem for likely many more customers than just the one that complained.

The unhappy customer did not call customer service. He didn’t write a letter. He didn’t complain to all his friends (at least as far as we know). Instead he reached out directly on Twitter, to the head of the company and let him know about the problem. Within minutes, Musk replied about the problem, promising “Will take action.” Then he fixed the problem and likely went right on to something else. Full story here.

Are you surprised that the complaint went to social media first? If you are, then you need to pay some extra attention to your company’s (or your own) social media presence. While the president of a company doesn’t have to actually monitor/respond to every issue that comes up on social media, you’d better have someone in place that can and does.

Most jewelers have a great track record of solving customer issues and being on top of things, but when a customer goes straight to social media (as they often do today and more so each year) then it’s a harder to problem solve effectively if you are not in a place to find out about it. Ensure that you have someone on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Google Reviews, to start. Hopefully you already have these channels covered. And a Google Alert for your name and your business name doesn’t hurt either. Once you know you have your commiunications channels covered, then you can apply your problem-solving skills to take care of any issues, as well as letting the social media world that you are all over it.

“Will take action.” Make a note of that one and use it when you can!

Top image: CallCentre.co.uk