I’ve recently (well for a few months now) received some really poor customer service from a well known rentals by post company in the UK. I’m not going to go into the details here, nor am I going to name and shame – it’s not my style. I see this as an opportunity to learn some really important points.

The main challenge I’m having, and I believe this is true of almost all poor customer service, is that I’m really struggling to be understood. This particular company prefer to do everything by email and I have sent in the region of 15 emails about their service in the last 6 months. To their credit, each time I have contacted them, they have replied within a few hours, however they seem to have a set of stock responses that do not relate to the challenges I’ve experienced.

In any situation where a customer or client makes a complaint, it is critical that your customer services representatives get straight to the root of the problem, without making assumptions about what their customer is experiencing. In the IT world, (where I worked before becoming a coach) the help-desks would always ask the obvious questions such as, “is it switched on at the wall” and “have you tried rebooting the computer”. I’m sure if you’ve had those conversations with an IT help-desk, you’ll have some idea of how frustrating it is.

I’m happy to allow one of these stock responses – I can understand that help centres must receive a good proportion of complaints where the user is doing something wrong. However, when a company continues answering your enquiries with these stock responses, it becomes immensely irritating. Rather like having a conversation with someone who is clearly only interested in hearing themselves speak. It feels like you are banging your head against a brick wall and there seems to be no solution. If you allow your customers to get to this point, you are pretty much guaranteed to have lost them for good.

One of the major problems that large companies have chosen to take on, is when they outsource their help and customer relations to a country where their staff speak the customers language only as a second language. Immediately, in such difficult communications, you are creating a barrier. If your customer or client feels like they are not being heard or understood (which sadly is often the case) they immediately feel that you are a company who do not care and all trust is lost. Many complaints are complicated in their nature and even if the user is in error, the customer service staff must first understand their point of view before explaining the correct procedure or pointing out what they may do differently.

The bottom line is that you don’t get many chances to make a good impression – especially in an economic climate that people feel uncomfortable in. The most upset and angry of customers can easily be turned into a trusting, loyal customer with a little understanding from someone who represents your company. It strikes me that when you receive poor customer service, you immediately assume that the company doesn’t care about it’s customers. The truth is probably that they are doing things on the cheap and paying the price for that in their customer service.

There is no situation that cannot be resolved in an agreeable way – with good customer service, where the client feels heard and understood, you are 95% of the way there.