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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal, counseling,
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professional service, or any advice.
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You should seek the services of.
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Competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas.
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Hello, and thank you for tuning in to a Sharp
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Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV.
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I am Angela Sharp, your host.
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I'll arm to your discussions with industry experts will give
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you the steps, tools and information to be successful in
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business and to prepare you to be your best self.
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Hello, I'm Angela Sharp. Here at a Sharp Outlook, a
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place where you get informed and learn best practices for success.
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And today we are going to talk about a very
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important topic. Complaints. Customer complaints. They're not something that's bad,
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they are opportunities for you, and in today's fiercely competitive world,
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customer service is key to growth and profits. Knowing how
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to retain customers, build a presence and market share, and
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improve worker performance is crucial. Almost nothing strikes more fear
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in an employee's heart than a customer with a complaint.
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Most employees would rather have a root canal than deal
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with customers who aren't pleased with a product or service
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they purchase from your company, And so we want to
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talk about how to turn that that what you consider
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some of one of the worst times ever into an opportunity.
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Your first thought might be, where can I hide? Face it?
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You can't hide, But what you can do and should do,
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is address the situation in the process retain those customers
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and the more and the money they spend with you.
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The first step is realizing that any complaint from a
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customer or a co worker for that matter, is an
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opportunity to learn and to grow. Many customers simply take
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their business elsewhere. I don't think that's what you're wanting
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them to do. Those who come to you with a
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complaint are giving you an opportunity to solve their problems
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and identify what changes in your company's products or services
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might need to be made. What are the barriers that
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prevent you from satisfying the customer? Most barriers involve policy,
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procedures and processes, and maybe outdated policy that prevent employees
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from offering practical solutions and doing so in a timely manner. Well,
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my guest today is John shol and he is an
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expert in the business of customer service and training and
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teaching your organizations and the members of your organization how
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to have a winning customer service. I would like to
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invite John to the show right now so we can
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talk about complaints on how to handle them in a
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manner that you don't lose your customer. Hi.
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John, Hi, Good morning, Angela.
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Good morning to you. And so we're going to be
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talking about customer complaints, and I know you have great
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insight on what needs to happen when you have a
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customer that's a little unhappy.
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Angela, you did a really good job with the introduction
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and could just stole all my thunder your right that
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complaints are an opportunity to fix problems that you have.
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All of us, no matter how good we want to be,
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we make mistakes, yes, and things go wrong, And when
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a customer becomes irate or difficult, or raises their voice
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or becomes you know, starts to complain, You're right that
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most employees run for cover and they lie. I'd say
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eighty percent of employees lie anything to get out of it,
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good goodbye. And they don't realize that this is a customer.
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And what's more important is they don't realize the value
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of the customer. So ninety nine companies have no grasp
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of how much a customer really costs them if they leave.
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They think it's a twenty five dollars transaction. No, it's
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not twenty five dollars. If you look at the history,
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let's say the history of a customer's ten years, and
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they spend twenty five dollars one year, thirty, the next year, fifty,
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the next year, seventy, the next year, eighty, the next year.
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You need to take a look at that value over
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the ten years, and it's not now a twenty five
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dollars decision. It could be eight hundred and fifty dollars.
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So you're saying goodbye to eight hundred and fifty dollars. Now.
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It costs a lot of money to market to get
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new customers, so nobody thinks about the importance of keeping
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a customer. And employees they don't care. They this guy's
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a jerk, he's a real ass. Just let's get rid
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of We don't need them in our business. Okay, he could.
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And the people that complain are usually some of your
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most valuable customers. They spend the most money with you,
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they're the most demanded, and they expect results. And when
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you screw up is all you got to do is
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take responsibility. But angel that means you've got to lose face.
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So if you made a mistake, you know, the most
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important thing in terms of handling complaints is is to
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say I screwed up and it's all my fault. Now,
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you got it. You might have to take out more
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insurance at your company if you train employees to do that,
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because some customers may die of an immediate heart attack
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because they've never heard an employees say that in their life,
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so they can says die right on the spot. But
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I can count on one hand all the times I've
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ever had an employee in my life say I made
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a mistake and it's my fault.
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Yeah. Yeah, that ownership is really important, and you're right.
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They don't we say I'm sorry, but really you don't
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mean i'm sorry. You just say i'm sorry that you're complaining.
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Just get out of my life. But I'm saying i'm sorry.
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It's nice and it's polite, but it's not. It's not
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going to really just handle the thing because most companies,
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you know, are poor. I sent an email yesterday morning
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about six o'clock to a new mortgage company that's handling
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one of my rental properties called Vallon Va l O
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N and said, I am surprised that you don't have technology.
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I'm surprised that with a company of your size that
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you cannot afford a call center that could answer questions.
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So when you call them, they say I need the
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last four digits of your Social Security number. When you
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give it to them, it says that didn't work. We
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need your the ZIP coded five digits for the zoop code,
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and none of it gets through. They never called me,
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and I said it's urgent, you need to call me,
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but they haven't called me. Now I didn't choose them.
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They took over the mortgage on a couple of properties
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I own, but because there's a hell of a screw
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up where they're taking money out of the wrong account,
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and I thought it was probably my fault, but now
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I realized that so they're so incompetent that is probably
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their fault. So companies sometimes don't have execution right. And
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you know, there's six steps we teach in customer service,
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and this is in the Feelings program that I developed
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and wrote in nineteen seventy nine, Angela Before You Were Born,
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and it was released in January of nineteen eighty and
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those six inciples are as valid today as they were
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back then. Number one, you got to feel good about yourself.
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Number two, you've got to have practice the habits, the courtesy,
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you've got two three seconds. Number three, you got to
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use positive communications. That means that you've got to smile,
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you got to be polite, you've got to have good
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verbal language. You got to call by their name. Most
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people today don't have good soft skills, you know, spend
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all their time on their apps playing games, and the
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young people today are really weak on soft skills. You
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got to perform. You've got to do what you said
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you're going to do right. And that's where we all
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fall down. So there's a lot of complaints either because
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the present was rude and different, or you didn't do
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what you said you're going to do. And then the
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fifth item is you got to really listen to the customer,
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tune in and pay attention to what they're saying, tell
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me again, Angela, how we screwed up on this thing? Angela,
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can you expand on what we did wrong? I want
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to have a better grasp of what we got to do.
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You're forcing them out of their emotional mind into more
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of an analytical mind. And then the step is you've
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got to learn about your products and services. I think
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in any business you can tell in seconds if the
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employee knows what they're talking about. You can smoke up
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somebody's you know ear, you know by lying, you can
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tell if people really know what they're talking about. And
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so you learn about your products and services. So and
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by the way, if you do LS, you move up.
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A lot of people would like to make more money.
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The easiest way to make more money is be more
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effective than anybody you're working with, r dispensable and extraordinary. Now,
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part of that is you've got to teach people how
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to handle irate customers. In nineteen seventy nine we did
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the design for Feelings, the feedback and the pilots that
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we did is we need two things. They wanted. They
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wanted to know what's in it for me? You know,
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I'm improving my customer service. So what how is it?
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How is it going to help me? So we built
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in getting people to feel good about themselves. It's probably
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the singular most powerful part of the Feelings program. The
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second thing they wanted add it is how do we
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handle complaints? How do we handle these irate customers because
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they're just ruins and employees? Yeah, yeah, And I find
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that you don't really need to ever become my rate.
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To send an employee into orbit is all you got
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to do is raise your voice and they scattered, very defensive.
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And if you really want to piss somebody off, if
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you really want to send them to the moon, take
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a picture of the Oh my god, that will I mean,
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they will go nuts. Okay, So but.
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I was going to say, I think a lot of
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companies what the problem is they're not understanding and what
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a great opportunity that they have. They're learning about something
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in their organization, a process, a procedure of the way
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the product was made, the way that it was package,
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or whatever it is that the customers complaining about. They're
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getting more feedback than they arrogant from some marketing study
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that they're trying to do. And those things are extremely expensive,
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and the people they pick they generally are there and
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going to tell you what you want to hear instead
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of the truth. So being able to get the truth
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from a customer that's saying, I've been here shopping for
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the past ten us and this is what's going on
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with your product or your service has fallen down from
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the way it used to be ten years ago, and
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whatever they're saying. You need to be writing those notes
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down because those are process changes that you need to
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make in your organization instead of, like you said, just saying, oh,
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we don't care. Just let this person go about their business.
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We don't care what they're saying or what you know
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is going on. We'll get another customer that's their mindsight.
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And it's very expensive to get new customers, very very expensive.
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In New York City, it costs for a restaurant to
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get a new customer could cost him twelve hundred dollars
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a person. So now I lose that customer. I mean,
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just think of that, that just to get them as
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twelve hundred dollars, very very expensive. So complaints are opportunities
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to solve problems, keep a customer more loyal, and to
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improve your system. So if an employee, here's a complaint.
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They need to let management know here's what the problem
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is and here's what we should do different The manager
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if they hear about complaints, they need to go and
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figure out how they can change their systems to eliminate that.
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The biggest problem Angela is that most people have never
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been trained on customer service, right, Most people have never
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been trained on how to handle a difficult or irate customer.
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And it increases employee turnover. So the typical employee turnover
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in most organizations is probably twenty five percent, fifty percent,
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so it's one hundred percent, you know. So you if
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you have really well trained employees that really understand customer service,
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you're going to have more execution, you're going to have
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less problems, you're going to have less complaints. And then
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part of the process is you want to teach people
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how to handle difficult customers, how to handle complaints. How
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it's an opportunity.
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But you know, one of the other things I think
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is the problem is they don't empower those employees to
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be able to answer the customer's problem. They don't give
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them they don't give them the ability to make a
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decision on the spot that will resolve the issue that
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will make the customer happy. And instead they you know,
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like you said, they might go out and just lie
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to them just to quiet them down, when they could
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actually talk about resolutions to the problem if they were
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taught how to do that. And now you're building trust,
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you're making the customer think your care. But you've got
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to empower these people so that they can, you know,
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talk to the person that's in there upset.
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And empowerment means that the employee has to be able
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to make a decision on the spot in favor of
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the customer. Yes. So empowerment is not you're empowered to
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say no. I mean that's the first word that most