By Mr. Retail
If someone had told me two years ago that one of the biggest fall outs from the pandemic would be restless, irritable people, I wouldn’t have believed them. But here we are, two years into it and people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Add in the unrest of the war in Ukraine, runaway inflation, and looming supply chain issues, and we have a perfect storm brewing. What is that storm? Bad reviews.
I have even sat down to write someone a bad review myself based on poor service and then, in the end, I deleted it. I have decided to try and put extra effort into giving good reviews for people that deserve them. So, how can we stop a bad review before it gets posted?
We are putting even more focus on pleasing our clients, no matter how difficult that may be. While you might say that some clients just need to be fired, the storm of negative publicity they can leave in their wake can truly damage one’s business.
We cut clients more slack than ever and we are razor focused on our employees providing truly excellent service. And if a client complains, we are gracious, even if they don’t deserve it. I am NOT saying to let a client take advantage of you, but rather, kill them with kindness.
If you are not calling clients immediately when you notice something awry with their vehicle, start now. Right now. Take pictures and text or email them BEFORE the work begins so no finger pointing can happen after the fact. And if you have to spend some money to make someone happy, just do it and send them on their way.
I have many more days at the moment where I am glad that the day is over. So, I am sure that it takes less to set me off than two years ago. When you are dealing with a challenging client, you have to be honest with yourself and say “what is my mental capacity today? Would this have bothered me as much a few years ago?” With that in mind, let’s do our best to try and ward off a bad review before it gets published by treating every client well, no matter how hard. We will get through this together, I promise.
About Mr Retail
Mr Retail offers opinions and information on car audio retailing for CEoutlook. He wishes to remain anonymous. He has owned a retail store in this country for over 20 years now. Mr Retail loves what he does and loves the 12 volt industry and is happy to share his hard won expertise.
“kill them with kindness” THIS – this is what I have always believed. Empathize with your clients, feel their pain, see it from their perspective and do whatever you can to make them happy. It works. We get so many clients because of our 5 star google reviews and the only reason we have them is we practice exactly what Mr. Retail preaches.
Goggle and all other companies should remove the section where people leave reviews whether it’s good or bad. So many happy customers do not leave reviews at all but few scumbags and sometimes they are not even customers leave bad reviews just for the hell of it. Google of course charge businesses a hefty amount of money to remove bad reviews and make a bad business look like the greatest business in the world. I think businesses should have a choice to allow people leave or not leave reviews. Why should have our business govern by companies like google or yelp or others. These companies should help not be part of destroying businesses specially small businesses. That’s my opinion.