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Annoying Customer Behaviors

Written by: Dale Furtwengler

Article Overview: If you're looking for a way to distinguish yourself from your competitors, take a look at your customers' annoying behaviors.

Annoying Customer Behaviors





Your ticket to industry leadership

Be grateful to those who cause you difficulty, they offer the greatest opportunity for learning. - The Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium

We’re not talking about the customers from hell, the ones who are never satisfied no matter what you do. The best advice I’ve heard for dealing with these customers is “Refer them to your competitors!”

Instead, let’s look at good customers who exhibit annoying behaviors, things that make your life difficult and cost you money. These behaviors could be slow pay, unusually high returns or delays in providing information you need. Whatever the source of your frustration, these behaviors offer an opportunity to eliminate headaches for yourself and your customers. Here’s how it works.

Balancing the Scales

We live in a reciprocal world. If you treat me nicely, I’m going to treat you well. If you treat me poorly, I’m going to find a way to balance the scales. When you see annoying customer behavior, you’re seeing your customers balancing the scales. You’re doing something they don’t like. Doing something to your detriment is their way of expressing their displeasure.

Eliminate the source of their dissatisfaction and you’ll:

• Eliminate your problem

• Eliminate your customer’s problem

• Build customer loyalty

• Distinguish yourself from your competitors

• Attract new customers

Example

One of my clients was experiencing slow pay from otherwise good customers. What we discovered is that 80% of these delinquencies resulted from the same situation. The customer’s field superintendent would request changes to the work, but refused to sign a change order. That left my client with a dilemma. Do they pack up all the equipment and a ten-person crew and moving to another site, assuming one was available, or make the changes and hope that they would be paid? They chose the latter.

Of course, the people at the customer’s headquarters were surprised by the bill. It didn’t coincide with the contract and there were no change orders to support the additional work. The result was a lot of time lost to negotiations which resulted in neither party being completely happy with the experience. How did we solve this problem?

When a customer’s field superintendent requested a change, my client:

• Had our foreman contact our estimator with the requested changes
• Had our estimator type a two paragraph memo listing the changes requested, the cost of these changes and a sentence stating “we will proceed with these changes unless you stop us”
• Then faxed the memo to the customer’s corporate headquarters

This approach not only eliminated the slow pay problem, it’s afforded my clients other significant advantages.

Multiple Benefits

My client’s original approach was the industry practice; changing to the new procedure helped them:

• Differentiate themselves from their competitors

• Set a new standard for customer service, one that has not yet been adopted by their competitors

• Discover solutions to other frustrations the customer was experiencing

• Attract new customers

All of these benefits have positioned my client to become the leader in their industry. A migration from their competitors has already begun and is gaining momentum. In addition, my client’s reputation is also attracting a higher caliber worker which will enhance their ability to provide even greater service in the future.

If you want to gain industry leadership you need look no further than your customers’ annoying behaviors.



Copyright © 2006, Dale Furtwengler, all rights reserved

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  Remember, it is only the Behaviors that count!©

Article Tags: dalai lama, ethics, frustration, headaches, hell, industry leadership, money, new millennium, rsquo, scales, style text, text decoration, times new roman



Related Forum Posts
Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
Re: Paypal process $315 million in payments per day. - I agree with you David, their Customer relations suck. This mean other payment systems like 2CO and WORLDPAY should work on their customers relations to take more slice of the market.
Re: Welcome to Entrepreneur University! - Hi Evan and GT, Can you clarify? If you join the "Preferred Customer" you are not entitled to commission? Why? This is the the $79.95/month account, I don't understand why you are not getting commission from it?
Re: Email Marketing Benefits - Robert, Many lists consist of more prospects than customers. Customer lists are the best, but they are created because prospects successfully transform into customers.
Marketers, Learn What You Can, Cannot Control Online - I am a Customer Service Representative in my company so naturally every once and a while I get angry customers fed up with my companies policies. Oh! I remember one day on my way home from school I was walking by a gas station and there was a man with a huge cardboard sign outside a small car mechanic business telling people not to go there because they are crooks. I am pretty sure they lost tons of business. I know my mama kept away from there after I told her about it. I found it pretty funny. I wonder if the guy got arrested or fined though....


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