Follow-up on Negative Feedback.

I recently stopped buying from a pizza parlor that my wife and I have been patronizing since 1997. The owner couldn’t be nicer. Even his family was very pleasant and I knew most of them by name. The location is very convenient for us. Not only is it nearby, I’m constantly shopping at the supermarket, the gas station, the drugstore, and the Chinese restaurant which surround it. It’s also ½ a block from our ATM and our bank.

As the new management took over the restaurant, I sat down with the owners to help them with their pricing — which was lower than it should have been for their industry. I also discussed their sauce which became so spicy my wife can no longer stand it. So, why would we give up doing business with this establishment which was our staple virtually every Friday night and many weekday and Saturday nights as well?

Part of the problem stemmed from making numerous attempts to place an order and not being able to get through. At times, I wondered if the place was even still open. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was that, despite repeated requests for them not to overcook our food, week after week, the pizza was burnt to a crisp and most of their other food looked like it had been cremated.

If you ask any one coaching a restaurant business, they will tell you there are three things you have to get right in order to be successful. The food needs to be tasty, the pricing needs to be profitable, and the service needs to be good. If you get these three things right, most of your customers will allow you to get away with other mistakes. However, if you have poor food and your service suffers, you are in big-time trouble.

Is the same thing happening in your business? Are customers trying to tell you that they have a problem (which really means that you have a problem) and are their attempts falling on deaf ears? Remember that a customer that complains is doing you a service. He is letting you know that something is wrong and giving you the opportunity to fix it — and not just for him. When you fix one customer’s problem, you fix it for your other customers as well and you prevent new customers from ever knowing it was a problem to begin with.

Your customers are not responsible for telling you when something is wrong but when one does, you have the responsibility to act on it quickly and fix it permanently. And when your customers see that you do, they can become your best, long-term customers.

“Customer service is the new marketing.” – Derek Sivers

Let me hear from you.

This excerpt is taken from the seminar entitled Turning Complaints into Compliments. I encourage you to click here to register for the exclusive live Zoom presentation of Turning Complaints into Compliments on Thursday, October 19, 2023 from 9 AM to 12 noon Eastern Standard Time.