Cranky Customer Day
May. 8th, 2017 11:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bill_schubertFor no particular reason we've had two customers already this morning (both a holdover from last week) who are NOT HAPPY with our service and/or the prices.
One of them is fairly new and has already moved on. Not a big deal. It happens.
The other has been a customer for years. He runs a jewelry store and always seems to call on Fridays with an emergency. Sure enough he called this Friday and needed a replacement computer. We did what we could but could not get it back to him until this morning. We called the vendor who owns the software that runs his Point of Sale and did what we could with them to get things working then delivered the computer. As it turned out there was nothing immediate to do as the computer was delivered since the vendor rep was in a meeting. Our standard business charge if we roll a vehicle is $130 (the norm for our industry). We had not charged for anything but the comptuer. Not the half hour to migrate data and complete the set up nor the half hour + to get through to the vendor and get things rolling. The customer went ballistic over the $130 charge and even after I offerred to drop the delivery charge and just put together the charges as they accrued and invoice him when he was done he berated my tech on site and gave him a check for $130.
He also went out of his way to complain about a $45 charge he had to pay when he brought his computer in a couple of weeks ago with a mail problem we tracked down to his mail provider. After running down the problem and documenting what he needed to do about it (and offering to do it ourselves if he wanted to pay) we give him his PC back. Then he said today he had to pay us when we did nothing.
Other than the negative energy generated by the two experiences it is not a big deal. The jeweler would not be the first we've not had a tech available when they continuously call with emergencies and bitch about paying.
No time for negativity.
One of them is fairly new and has already moved on. Not a big deal. It happens.
The other has been a customer for years. He runs a jewelry store and always seems to call on Fridays with an emergency. Sure enough he called this Friday and needed a replacement computer. We did what we could but could not get it back to him until this morning. We called the vendor who owns the software that runs his Point of Sale and did what we could with them to get things working then delivered the computer. As it turned out there was nothing immediate to do as the computer was delivered since the vendor rep was in a meeting. Our standard business charge if we roll a vehicle is $130 (the norm for our industry). We had not charged for anything but the comptuer. Not the half hour to migrate data and complete the set up nor the half hour + to get through to the vendor and get things rolling. The customer went ballistic over the $130 charge and even after I offerred to drop the delivery charge and just put together the charges as they accrued and invoice him when he was done he berated my tech on site and gave him a check for $130.
He also went out of his way to complain about a $45 charge he had to pay when he brought his computer in a couple of weeks ago with a mail problem we tracked down to his mail provider. After running down the problem and documenting what he needed to do about it (and offering to do it ourselves if he wanted to pay) we give him his PC back. Then he said today he had to pay us when we did nothing.
Other than the negative energy generated by the two experiences it is not a big deal. The jeweler would not be the first we've not had a tech available when they continuously call with emergencies and bitch about paying.
No time for negativity.
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no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 16:31 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 16:38 (UTC)We've got a CRM/Scheduling program that we set appointments with and track service, etc. One of the features is I can set a customer so that nothing can be scheduled without my permission. A note pops up saying to contact owner before interacting with the customer further.
It is a nice feature.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 16:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 16:49 (UTC)Need to keep them positive for the next phone call.
I went on site once with a tech. It was a weird call. We had never met the person and a third party had kind of sent us so we didn't know much. But we have a standard invoice and every customer must sign it or we don't do the work. It has some legal protections for us. The customer refused to sign and we said we could not help. So she got all crazy and talked about how bad we were and yadayadayada...
We got back to the car and my tech was venting as was I. The thought occurred to me that this could drag on. So I declared a five minute venting period after which the customer no longer existed and we would not discuss it. We both bitched about it for five minutes and did not refer to the incident for another three years at which time it had long lost its emotion and became legendary.
Things the MBA programs don't teach but are pretty damn important.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-09 11:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-09 14:12 (UTC)it can be soul sucking to spend too much time looking at other people's negative opinion of your business.