The importance of customer satisfaction

Establishing and maintaining a good relationship with your customers is key to the success of your business. In a customer satisfaction survey of over 700 customers, 80% said they would switch to a competitor as a result of bad customer service.

Although “the customer is always right,” they may not always be easy to deal with. Learning how to respond to difficult customers is an important step for any business owner, especially those who work in the customer service industry. Even businesses with the best products and services are bound to have occasional run-ins with angry customers.

To build a positive reputation with consumers, it is important to have properly trained staff who can handle difficult people and resolve customer complaints. Kim Angeli, founder and CEO of Grateful Box, said that the first strategy in turning an unhappy customer from grumpy to grateful is to thank them for sharing their bad experience with you.

“Our natural response is to get defensive and get into a negative mindset with a disgruntled client,” Angeli said. “Once you flip the switch and start with ‘thank you,’ the response is out of the ordinary for them. This works in every business, and once the strategy is taught to the customer service teams, sales divisions and leadership, the impact is amazing.”

However, handling a difficult customer doesn’t stop there. The following section will cover several other scenario-specific techniques and strategies that your team can learn to enhance the quality of customer service when dealing with different types of challenging customers…[MORE]