You know the type: the customers who won’t be pleased no matter how you try to satisfy them. They stand guard over their vehicle, watching as every inch of the car is towel-dried. They complain the wash doesn’t have enough suds – and on the next visit, that there are too many suds.
It may as well be Goldilocks herself visiting your operation, looking for the “just right” in every detail.
But these customers can’t simply be dismissed with an eye roll and a “too picky” label, nor can their polar opposites, the Pollyannas who love everything. Instead, these customers could be the “canary in the coal mine,” as two Harvard professors recently put it.
“Often the lovers or haters of a product can be … an early warning system that can alert managers to problems or identify areas where a competitor could come in and take away the bulk of the market,” Jill Avery, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a former brand manager at Gillette, Samuel Adams and AT&T, told Harvard Business News. Avery and business administration professor Michael Norton recently taught a course on what could be learned from those customers outside the norm.
And while anyone in the service industry might say that society in general has become more opinionated, Jeff Mowatt, a customer service strategist and author of “Becoming a Service Icon in 90 Minutes a Month,” doesn’t see it that way.
“Are people becoming more demanding? I don’t think we are. People are so rushed and distracted by technology and devices, they aren’t noticing good service,” he said. “The only time we notice is where there’s an inconvenience in their busy day. A car wash is an errand. They enjoy the benefits of a car wash, but the actual process is a hassle.”
Whether these customers wear down a staff or provide insight into weaknesses in the business is all in how their feedback is received.
Mowatt prefers to see them as a good thing. “When they are demanding, we get to find out where our areas of improvement are, which is good to remain competitive,” he said. “When you can thrill somebody who is demanding, they are likely to be much more loyal than someone who is happy about everything. With the customer who is always happy, they are just as likely to cross the street the next time to your competitor.”
But there’s a step that comes before applying the insight to the operation: dealing with the displeased customer standing before you.
“Two things are happening with people when they’re frustrated,” Mowatt said. “They’re not getting what they expected, and now they’re having to take more time to confront somebody. When we’re engaging with them, the most important thing from the outset is that they want somebody to understand them. They want them to understand what the problem is, but on a deeper level to understand the context, how this has inconvenienced them.”
Mowatt recommends letting these customers tell their story. “We need to stop what we’re doing, pay attention, have body language that says we’re focused on what they’re saying. It’s one thing to have heard somebody but it’s another to prove to somebody that we’ve heard them. Start your sentence with, ‘Sounds like.’ When you start a sentence with ‘Sounds like we dropped the ball,’ it forces us to paraphrase what they’ve told us. It says to them, ‘She really gets me.’”
Jim Rembach, an expert in customer relationship metrics and an authority on emotional intelligence, suggested another technique, especially effective if a customer is irate: “Write it down,” he said. “Tell her, ‘I want to get everything that you’re concerned about.’ They feel like they’re being heard.”
To do so without becoming provoked into an argument, Rembach suggests approaching the situation as “a fly on the wall. There was a scientific study that was done that showed that if you can act as if you are a fly on the wall, it removes you from the heat of the discussion.”
And it means making sure that front-line employees not only know how to do this, but know how to pass along this information when appropriate.
“There are all kinds of ways to gather feedback,” Mowatt said. “The easiest way that I share with leaders is to have a meeting together and debrief. Ask about feedback that is going on. Employees can be a great source of market intelligence. They need to do more than make change and process transactions.”
But ultimately, there’s a fine line between salvaging a customer relationship and saying goodbye.
“Oftentimes there is no situation where you can reason with the unreasonable,” Rembach said. “In those cases, it’s OK to politely end the relationship. The best thing you can do for those who are on the negative extreme end is give them the business card of your competition and politely say, ‘I don’t think we’re the right fit for you.’”
At the opposite end are the customers who think your car wash is just a little slice of heaven, who are the most loyal of loyal. They too can serve as a source of information that extends well beyond the momentary good feelings that come to the recipients of their gushing.
“You have to get to the triggers, what caused them to feel that way,” Rembrach said. “Ask them questions and show appreciation for them. ‘I really appreciate that you feel that way about us. We feel that way about you. But what specifically makes you feel that way?’”
This can serve not only as great market intelligence, but also provide testimonials to be used on your website, or on posters hanging on the walls. “That’s the science of persuasion 101,” Rembach said. “Social proof is going to move some of those other folks on the fence to become more loyal. And not just loyal, but loyal in sharing. Use them as part of your inner circle of folks who continue to give you feedback and do something out of the ordinary for them.”
And no, that’s not just giving them a free wash every once in a while. “Maybe there’s a rosebud in the passenger seat — something totally out of character and a little different,” Rembach said.
He tells the story of a Florida pool cleaner who would visit a pool to give a quote and would leave a rubber ducky in the pool with a note. When he secured the business and returned for that first visit, he’d leave 10 with a note that said, “I invited some of my friends because this place was so awesome.”
The rubber ducky became a calling card of sorts for his business. “It was a fun way of having people talk about something different, which led to more loyal customers,” Rembach said.
No matter which end of the spectrum the extreme customers sit on, they have the opportunity to greatly influence the majority of customers. These days, it can be through social media. Or it can be by providing actionable intelligence about your operation.