Even the most careful entrepreneur will make mistakes, and part of being a small business means that every customer counts and every interaction could potentially create a ripple effect for better or for worse. Entrepreneurs, more than anyone else, need to take customer satisfaction extremely seriously, and when mistakes happen be sure to handle them with grace and humility. Mistakes are inevitable, but how you handle them is totally up to you and can make or break your relationship with a customer and future customers. Take a look at these articles on how to set yourself up for customer relation success even when it seems like the cards are stacked against you.
It’s All About Reputation
We all know that we should try to give a great customer experience in order to get positive reviews, but we’d like to challenge you to take your thinking a step further and try to actually build up your business’ reputation beyond the reviews section. Getting great street cred starts with a few basic steps, check out our tips to building a great brand in this post.
Learn From Your Customers
It’s easy to be dismissive of criticism, but it’s also a good way to get stuck and never grow or improve your business. Customers who are both satisfied and unsatisfied are your greatest resource in identifying your weak spots so that you can patch them up and build a stronger business and a stronger brand. Check out this Huffington Post article on how to use a customer survey to improve your business.
It’s the Mistakes that Make Us
Even the most organized, most productive, and most dedicated entrepreneur will make a mistake at some point, it’s simply a fact. The goal isn’t to never ever make a mistake, that’s impossible, but rather to learn to respond to mistakes swiftly and effectively so that you leave your customer happy and satisfied even when things don’t go smoothly. If a conflict seems to be arising, here is our advice on how to handle the customer for the best outcome possible.
Watch Your Language
Whether or not you’re a native English speaker, there may be some phrases that you use without thinking which could create a very negative impression on your customer. While you might not mean anything by it, these 9 phrases that Entrepreneur points out could be pushing your customer away and leaving a bad taste in their mouth. Here are the phrases to avoid in order to maintain a positive relationship.
How do you handle negative customer interactions? Tell us in the comments!
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