Do you know how to be a Good Customer?

Good Customer Service

As business owners have you ever considered how you act as a customer will reflect on your own business?

Time and again I have run across business owners who are not the best customers.

They are rude, not professional and just plain hard to deal with.

Accidents Happen

For instance, I just recently had a customer who purchased a downloadable e-book from one of my sites.

I have all products set up to be instantly emailed to customers upon purchase or they are redirected to a web page to download the product.

Unbeknownst to me, the website had gone down during the night while I was sleeping since the web hosting company I have my site through was doing updates and the servers were down for a couple of hours.

This was not something in my control and rarely happens but if you have a website you realise this type of thing happens from time to time.

The customer purchased the e-book during the night while I was sleeping and they did not receive it as it should have been sent automatically.

Shocking Complaint

The next morning I woke up and went to work and saw an email from this customer. I opened it up and was shocked!

Not only did they say they had been working online for 3 years trying to make money online but they were tired of being scammed by people...then they went on to say that means you and more words were said which I will not elaborate on.

The time that had passed from when they purchase the e-book to the time I got the email the next morning was only a few hours, not days or weeks.

My first instinct, of course, was to rectify the problem which is what I did I emailed the customer with their purchase and apologised for the inconvenience and explained that the site had been down.

Normally I not only send the purchased product but either send more items or offer a discount on their next purchase, after verifying that they did purchase from my sites.

他们总是这么粗鲁吗？

This time I was so floored by the rude comments, the words used in the email I did not.

After rectifying the situation I started wondering what business they owned.

Why?

What you do as a customer reflects on your own business!

If I was treated like this only a few short hours after a mistake happened on my own site how would I be treated if I ordered from them? Would they offer good customer service? Would I get my product?

难怪这位客户从未在线赚钱，如果你不能成为一个好客户，你是如何成为一个好的企业主人。

Politeness Dosen't Cost Anything

So the next time you are a customer and a problem occurs with a purchase, rememberthe way you act reflects onto your own business.

Give the owner the benefit of the doubt. Contact them politely and tell them there was a problem with their product and see if they can resend it or re-mail it to you. Be polite!

Now I am not talking about repeat problems with a website, or it’s been weeks or months and you haven’t received your product. I am talking about the very first time you contact another owner about a problem you have with a product.

Ask yourself this question: How would I as a business owner want a customer to treat me should they run across a problem with one of my products or services?

This article was contributed by Rebecca White