Are You Listening?

A week ago Tuesday my roommate was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.  After hours in emergency, she spent three days in critical care and three days in intermediate care.  She is currently in rehab.  During some very tense hours, I had several conversations with medical personnel, some of which were helpful and some frustrating.  Reflecting upon these interactions, I was reminded of the importance of listening.  I wanted to share my thoughts with you on the parts of the conversations that were not helpful and those that were positive.

The most frustrating and least helpful part of these conversations was too much talking at me.  Instead of taking time to listen, these people just kept pushing and reiterating what they wanted to say.  They were consumed with stating their points of view.  They did not seem interested in hearing what I had to say. If I had the audacity to question what they said, they dismissed me.  Their message that they were right and anything I had to say was wrong came through loud and clear.  Talking to them was not a two-way communication; it was like talking to a wall. 

They made me remember a quote from Zig Ziglar.  “We have two ears and one mouth.  We ought to use them in that ratio.  We should listen twice as much as we talk.”

Those who did listen asked questions.  They used the questions to clarify what I had asked, reflect back what I had said, and gather additional information.  All of these moved our communications forward and truly created an exchange.  I felt engaged, not isolated.  They gained information that could help my roommate.

As a result of these exchanges, they showed genuine interest in helping her and in speaking with me to do so. 

In the hurried pace of our lives, sometimes we don’t intend not to show interest.  We just neglect to take time to listen and ask questions.  We may not intend to frustrate our customers. 

But we do.

Being the recipient of not being heard prompted me to think about listening.  I was reminded how much we like and respect those who take the time to listen.  I realized how differently the customer feels when he or she thinks that a complaint is heard.  While you as a businessperson may not be able to change a situation for various reasons, the customer will likely accept the result more easily when you have a two-way communication.        

Take time to listen to your customers.  Don’t pretend to listen.  Actually engage your customers by asking questions and showing genuine interest.  If you have truly listened, after every interaction you will be able to state what you learned. 

End your conversations by asking yourself, “What do I know now that I didn’t know before that conversation?”

This week's marketing trivia challenge is What example do you have of how listening built a customer relationship? E-mail me your answer.

What Creates Frustrating Customers?

Customers can be frustrating.  Depending upon your recent interactions with customers, you may be thinking, Can be?  You might say, “Customers are frustrating!”

What often generates frustration with customers is satisfying their requests.  They contact your business and state what they want.  You and your staff give them what they want, and sometimes they aren’t happy.  At times they complain about little things that aren’t quite right.  You fix one of those complaints, and another pops up.  Each one annoys you and your staff further until you do not want to have anything else to do with those customers.  At that point, you are willing to do whatever it takes to get those customers off your back.

Your problem with these customers began when they first contacted your business.

“Tell me about it!” you say. 

No, I’m not being sarcastic.  When they told you what they wanted, you took them at their word and helped them get it.  You didn’t ask questions to find out if they actually knew what they were talking about.  In this day and age of customers researching online before they buy, customers contact us with what they want.  However that doesn’t mean they know what they really need.

Today more than ever customers want to be educated.  They want to understand.  That’s why they research online.  As businesspeople, we can help them immensely by giving them the benefit of our expertise, which only comes from experience.  We know our products and services better than customers do.  We know what has worked and not worked for other customers.  We know information that they cannot find online or anywhere else.

How do you share your information with them?

Ask questions.  Rather than fulfilling their requests immediately when they contact you, take time to ask them questions.  Use these to clarify what they want.  While they may think they know what they want, when you ask them questions you may discover that they want something else.  What they really want may not be satisfied by what they think they want to buy. 

If you find that to be the case, direct them to what will truly satisfy their wants.  Tell them why you recommend it.  Display your expertise and credibility in the process.  They will respect you for it.   They will appreciate your telling the truth and sharing your knowledge.  They will discern that you have their interests in mind.  As a result, your will sell them what they really want.

Best of all, you will create a truly satisfied customer and avoid future frustrations.

This week's marketing trivia challenge is What have you done to deal with frustrating customers?  E-mail me your answer.

The Best Choice

Today a client told me about a letter from a competitor that was sent to a customer denying a $40,000 warranty claim.  “The company personnel didn’t even have the courage to call the customer,” he stated.  “They hid behind the distance and one-sidedness of a letter.”

“Evidently management at the company did not care about continued business from that customer,” I replied.

“But the company did solicit more business from the customer in the future,” he added.

I shook my head.  “Study after study has shown that having a problem is not the reason a customer will not do business with a company again.  The response of the company to solving the customer’s problem determines the future relationship.  Giving attention to the situation and arriving at a solution that satisfies the customer makes the difference.  In fact, customer problems are opportunities to strengthen the company’s relationship with the customer.  Customers say that they will do business again with a company that shows an interest in the customer and handles the problem.”

“That’s why I tell all my employees never to leave a message on the phone, via e-mail, or in a letter that is not positive,” he agreed.  “If they have unpleasant news for a customer, I want them to own it and discuss it with the customer.  I want them to talk with the customer and arrive at a solution that works for the customer.”

“Good job!” I praised.

With all the different ways to communicate with customers today, we can easily use text, e-mail, voice mail, or even snail mail to deliver unpleasant news.  We can rationale hiding within one of these forms by telling ourselves that we don’t have the time to call the customer more than once, to wait for the customer to return a call, or to set aside time to reach the customer at a time that works for him.

If we want to retain that person as a customer and, hopefully, do more business with him or her, the best choice to communicate unpleasant news is direct, either voice-to-voice or face-to-face.  This choice offers the opportunity for two-way communication, a give-and-take discussion, and arrival at agreement to settle the situation.

When delivering anything that is not positive, use the best choice, the one that is an immediate person-to-person connection.      

This week's marketing trivia challenge is How do you and your employees deliver unpleasant news?  E-mail me your answer.

Unbelievable but True

The Union Street Guest House in Hudson, New York, established this policy to deal with negative online reviews.  "There will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from (a wedding party’s) deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any Internet site by anyone in the party and/or attending the wedding or event."

The New York Post ran a story on this policy.  As a result, hundreds of people went to Yelp.com, complained about the policy, and wrote fake, nasty reviews of Union Street Guest House.  At one point over seven hundred negative reviews had been posted.  Most of these were removed since they did not originate from first-hand experience. 

On the Guest House Web site, management maintained that guests who stay with them often don’t appreciate a historic building such as theirs.  "Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our inn, your friends and families may not.  This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer.  Therefore we expect you to explain that to them. USGH & Hudson are historic. The buildings here are old (but restored).

"Our bathrooms and kitchens are designed to look old in an artistic 'vintage' way. Our furniture is mostly hip, period furniture that you would see in many design magazines. (although comfortable and functional -- obviously all beds are brand new.) If your guests are looking for a Marriott-type hotel they may not like it here."

After the negative backlash, the Guest House posted this explanation on its Facebook page.  “The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago. It was meant to be taken down long ago and certainly was never enforced.”

However, one Yelp complainer revealed that after his complaint the prior year the inn’s management had twice threatened him.  He offered this excerpt from the inn‘s e-mail “Please note that your recent online review of our inn will cost the wedding party that left us a deposit $500. This money will be charged via the deposit they have left us unless/until it is removed. Any other or future reviews will also be charged to the wedding party (bride & groom) from the guarantee they have provided us."

Another guest posted that the owner was incredibly rude and dismissive when she asked for some ice.  She felt the Hudson area was lovely with great shopping, but she would not stay at the Union Street Guest House again.  The owner responded, “I know you guys wanted to hang out and get drunk for two days, and that is fine.”  He explained that his ice machine has been out of service when she requested the ice, but he invited her back for ice because the machine had been fixed.  He ended his reply with LOL. 

The Post’s story was picked up by several other media and has been widely circulated online, in print, and on TV and radio. 

Not surprisingly, the Union Street Guest House has sunk to a one rating. 

While this sounds unbelievable, it is a true story.  When I first heard it, I could not believe it.  I looked it up and read more about it.  Even as I write this to you, I am torn between chuckling at the absurdity and being shocked by the rudeness of the details.  I don’t know if the owner is burned out with overwork.  Perhaps negative customers have started to irritate him a great deal, and each additional negative comment adds to his irritation.  He may have become very focused on negative comments and subsequently only hear the bad. 

Whatever the cause, the owner is certainly not a good person to deal with customers.  We never solve a complaint with negativity.  Sometimes we cannot fix a situation, but we always can explain it factually in a friendly tone and language.  Allowing negative customers to bother us does not serve our businesses or our mental health.  Worrying about what people say about our businesses online can drive us nuts.

If you encounter this situation, do not respond to these complaints with negativity.  If you do, negativity will bounce back at your business several fold, as happened to Union Street Guest House.  Instead, focus on serving your customers well.  If you are doing that, good word of mouth and good reviews will overshadow the bad all on their own.

This week's marketing trivia challenge is How have you seen negative customer comments handled? E-mail your answer.

Addressing the Wrong Issue

Yesterday I heard a report that the names of two terminals at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport may be changed from Humphrey and Lindbergh to “One” and “Two.” The airport commission met to decide the issue. Commission members are held back from the name change by the estimated 2.2 million dollar cost to change signs both inside and outside the airport. At the end of the report, the reporter said, “People don’t understand these terminals because more signs are needed.”

“Wait a minute!” I thought. “They are changing the name of the terminals and spending over two million dollars in new signs because they need more signs?”

Checking out the story more thoroughly online, I discovered that the commission is reacting to complaints from those unable to find their flight. Some people have missed their flights due to the situation. This happens because the two terminals are three miles apart off different exits and have no road connecting them. If a person goes to the wrong terminal, finding the other one means retracing the route back to the highway and taking another exit.

The signs indicating the terminals do not list which airlines fly out of each one. Airlines switch terminals, too. If one’s last flight on Midwest left from the Humphrey terminal, today Midwest flights leave from the Lindbergh terminal. Without a listing, how would a traveler know that?

Not surprisingly, travelers have complained. In one week 600 travelers complained at the information booths around the airport. Travelers have also gone online and registered their complaints. As we all know, those with complaints get our attention. We tend to react to their complaints, often without checking out precisely the size of the problem and without thinking through the problem from the customer’s point of view. Since some complaints have voiced that the names “Lindbergh” and “Humphrey” are meaningless to them, the commission apparently feels that the names of the terminals are not memorable and, therefore, a great deal of the problem.

From what I read online, I suspect that the names of the terminals are not the problem. The problem is not knowing which airlines board at which terminal. I don’t think any traveler cares about the name of a terminal. He or she just wants to board on time. Thus, rather than changing the names of the terminals, the commission could solve the problem by listing the major airlines that board at each terminal. Doing so would make choosing the exit much easier, which would dramatically decrease the number of people going to the wrong terminal.

Incidentally, the new names of terminal one and terminal two will be for highway exit purposes only. In actuality, the terminals will still retain their historic names.

Huh? That sounds like more confusion will ensue.
To solve a customer’s complaint, you must get to the problem. Often, the problem is not what the customer voices. Those who voiced that they couldn’t remember the terminals were merely blaming the names because the names weren‘t “relevant.” I question that terminal one and terminal two would have any relevance, either. In fact, I can image myself getting to the exit and thinking, “Was that terminal one? I think so. Wait a minute, maybe it was terminal two…”

The real problem is behind what the customer voices. In order to discover the real problem, you must ask the customer questions. Don’t ask the customer what he or she thinks is the problem; find out what the customer wanted that he or she did not get. That information will point to the problem and, then, the solution.

Are you asking customers questions to discover the problems indicated by their complaints?