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.

Born of Frustration

Last week I applauded Budweiser for the Lost Dog campaign around their commercial that was rated by a USA Today poll as the top commercial of the 2015 Super Bowl.  Unfortunately for Budweiser, that was not the only commercial the company aired during the event.  Budweiser also spent one million dollars on a sixty second commercial that slammed its competition.

Titled “Made the Hard Way,“ this commercial begins by stating “Budweiser proudly a macro beer.”  Using background music with a hard beat, the commercial continues only with words written in all capital letters over video.  Here are the rest of the words:  “It’s not brewed to be fussed over.  It’s brewed for a crisp, smooth finish.  This is the only beer beechwood-aged since 1876.  There’s only one Budweiser.  It’s brewed for drinking not dissecting.  The people who drink our beer are people who like to drink beer brewed the hard way.  Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale.  We’ll be brewing us some golden suds.  This is the famous Budweiser beer.  This Bud’s for you.”  If you want to see the commercial, go here.  

I completely understand the origin of this commercial.  It comes from the frustration of top management at Budweiser.  While Budweiser and Miller control the beer market, their combined percentage of the market has dropped eight percentage points.  It was seventy-eight percent.  Now it’s seventy percent.  During that same time, craft beer drinking has increased nine percentage points.  This shift is infuriating top management at Budweiser. 

Consequently, management gave marketing the directive to create a hard-hitting ad to tell people that Budweiser is the best, and they better keep drinking it.  After all, Bud has been around since 1876.  It’s made the hard way.  It’s not some fussy beer that needs to be sniffed and sipped like craft beers.  Management wants people instructed to forget the craft beers and go back to drinking more Bud. 

Throughout my career, I have witnessed similar frustrations over competition from management of much smaller companies.  Their reactions usually follow the same pattern as Budweiser’s.  They stress out that people don’t know their company has been around for many years.  They slam their competition and inadvertently those who frequent it.  They tell people to do business with them, not their competition.  In their worry about competition and sliding market share, they focus on what’s in it for them. 

They need to focus on what’s in it for their customer.         

This week's marketing trivia challenge is  What‘s in it for your customer to do business with your company?  E-mail me your answer.