Disappointed Customers
April 16th, 2009 by angiemeyer | Filed under Chiropractic Coaching, communication.Most people don’t want to know about their disappointed customers. It scares them and it’s uncomfortable. Especially if you are a chiropractor, serving with all your heart. If you are taking care of people with world class excellence, doing your very best, it can really ruin your day to hear from someone who isn’t happy with your service. In fact, it can start a downward spiral of self-abuse if you don’t get hold of your head space right away.
From the wise Seth Godin, a guru in marketing and leading tribes, he says these words about disappointed customers, “Don’t ignore them”.
Find out if you can save the relationship and rectify the disappointment using LAASR communication we use in our coaching. Ask for more information to clarify the disappointment. Acknowledge their concerns/fears/feelings. Come up with a solution that works for both parties. And then knock their socks off! Really WOW them.
If they are out the door anyway and are the 10% of the population that will tell you they are disappointed (most will just disappear without a word), don’t hang your head in shame. Have the guts to ask what they didn’t like about the service? What could we improve upon for next time? The more information you can extract from these people and then change your approach, the better your service will get. Don’t hide from the hard stuff ~ get as much as you can get!
They key is to take their input not as criticism, but as feedback. It’s not a setback, but valuable information, a gift to evolve your practice, your procedures, your service. Because we can’t always see how our service is perceived. It is more important to extract this information from disappointed customers, than it is to ask why the happy ones like your service. Why? Because an unhappy customer tells 20, a happy customer tells 5.
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Tags: chiropractic, Chiropractic Coaching, Disappointed customers, Feedback, Happy customers, LAASR
Hi Angie
Thanks for the thoughts on this matter. I must say, having worked in Chiropractic offices myself this is a very pertinent and important issue. Thanks for highlighting it.
P.S. Seth Godin is great.
Thanks for your thoughts Jeremy. I’m glad that you have seen first hand the importance of handling customer disappointment. It can truly be the difference between growing and remaining stagnant. The more ways we can extract this information, in varying degrees of ‘confrontation’ the better. (What some behavioural styles see as confrontation, others do not).
If given the chance, a conversation is best. If not, a self-addresesd, self-stamped feedback form asking valuable questions is key. Any way about it, we need to know the seemingly ‘bad news insight’.
I’d be open to hearing other ideas of how to obtain this valuable information!