Businesses have historically dealt with a Customer face-to-face and now this is not the norm. A Business needs to ensure that there is no misunderstanding with how they communicate with Customers. With face-to-face interactions, the Business owner would automatically get an emotional response to their comments, allowing time, if required, to adjust their response to the Customer. But without that face-to-face interaction, the question is “How do you do that with a written response?”.
My simple tip is to not fall into the ‘Hot Head’ response of “I must respond now!”. This is proven time and time again to get someone into trouble. We all have instances where we can say “I wish I hadn’t said that”.
So, what is the correct way to respond? My suggestion is to:
- Step away from the task if your gut reaction is to be ‘angry’ over what was said.
- Craft your full response in full.
- Read it through once.
- Read in full again but thinking this time how your words will impact your customer base and edit it accordingly.
- Respond to the customer.
One thing to remember is that your response is one “cut-and-paste” away from reaching ALL your customers, including both your current and the all-important future customers. So be VERY careful.
I practice these steps and feel that my response has garnished the reply from the customer that I was expecting. Try this 5-Step Process yourself and let me know what you find out!
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