CUSTOMER EVANGELIZM TIP #320: "Customers Truth"

Never offer your CUSTOMERS anything less than the TRUTH in order to become More Highly TRUSTED. 

Most Customers, rightfully question the TRUTH of all events and this is primarily for two reasons that would take me much too long to explain here. But if you really want to know I'd be glad to do a webinar about it.

The rain was coming down pretty hard that day as I pulled up into the parking lot of the Bank. I arrived 30 minutes early as I am accustomed to doing and waited till about 10 minutes before my appointment start time to head into the Bank that day. By the time I informed his secretary that I was there for a scheduled appointment we had, the customer came out and invited me in. 

He immediately begin to raise his voice and tell me that he was Tired of the Poor Crappy service he was getting from our company! He further complained that he called and set up numerous appointments to meet with our Reps...that no body even had enough courage to show up and that this kind of non-sense had been going on for the past several months. 

He assured me that he was going to be looking for another company. I immediately apologized and told him that he wouldn't need to contact another company to do what I was going to do for him. Informing him that based on my research I had discovered to my own disappointment that the whole entire industry across the board even at our competitors was providing poor Customer Service...but now that I was here I was going to see to it that it changed for the better. 

To his surprise he was shocked when I immediately apologized and admitted that I had heard of similar stories like this before and that I too was disappointed that this kind of non-sense had taken place. I told him while I couldn't change the past that I would guarantee him that going forward into the future, (from here on out as long as he called me)...that it would be an entirely different experience and I would take personal responsibility to be his go to person inside of our company. I further asked him how much time he would realistically give me to straighten the problem out. He was fair and said he would give me two weeks since some of this will require an installation guy to come out to make some repairs and that they would have to order product. 

I told him I would personally see to it that everything get's cleared up in two weeks. He said he wouldn't believe it until he saw it. 

In less than two days I had a service truck out and all of the problems taken care of. I had the Customers problems solved and the Customer was back on board with our company and Very HAPPY Camper!

He called me up extremely grateful for all I had done. He then asked me if I could come back out and give him a proposal for some additional cameras he needed in his bank and if I could examine the entire system Burglar and Fire Alarm Systems including Cameras...and give him my personal recommendations for an upgrade to the system. I told him sure I'd be more than happy to do that...when would he like to see me? Within 2 weeks I was back out, examined the system for poor coverage and proposed to him my recommendations. He took the two contracts I had written up and immediately signed them and wrote me some checks. 

These kinds of negative experiences made good don't happen everyday. The reason why this did is because the customer read all of the cues I gave him about my professionalism and attitude on giving the customer a True Customer PASSION Evangelizm Experience. If you read this story again a few times you will glean some expertise on how to take a customers lemons and turn them into lemonade.

I chalk up this experience to a complete positive turnaround because I turned the customers "Negative Past Experience" into a "Positive Present Experience"... But it all began with me being Truthful with the Customer about our companies failure to Honor our relationship with him and then I guaranteed that I could solve the problem in less than a week even though he had given me two weeks to do it. 

The moral of the story is "Be Truthful with your Customers and if you do it right and exceed the Customers expectations they'll be calling you back Thanking you for the Great Service and then asking you to adequately review their existing system and buying new products from you. Again you can't afford to wait...use Customer Evangelizim Tip #320 today!

...by Deremiah *CPE