You know that you have great employees that do their job well, but your customer can be right too. What do you do when you’re forced to pick sides between your employee and your customer? Make the wrong choice and you might damage your business as well as your relationships between your customers and your employees.
When it comes to the challenge of Customer vs. Employee, whose side should you take?
Immediately side with the customer and you risk angering your employees. Team morale can drop when your workers feel they’re not appreciated.
Side with the employee outright and you might make situations even worse. You anger your customers and scare off potential customers because they feel you don’t care.
In reality, a negative review that mentions an employee has a no-win ending. Inexperienced managers will run and hide from a negative review, ignoring it and hoping it goes away. It’s understandable to not want any toxic energy in the workplace. But this can be a very wrong move in most cases.
Silence can send many messages back to your customers…
“They don’t really care about their customers.”
“There’s no trust when working with this company.”
“They’ll just take advantage of me.”
Silence is often a breeding ground for bitterness and resentment. It may seem like a smart move but can often allow customers – and employees – to fill in the blanks and come to their own conclusions.
So, how do you fix a problem like this one? Find out what is causing the issues and fix them at the root. There are many things that may cause problems, start investigating the issues below.
- Procedures. Create the best procedures so negative feedback won’t happen in the first place.
Poor procedures tend to create conflict, placing your customers and employees at odds with each other. As management, if you find poor procedures causing conflict, you must take responsibility and apologize to all ends.
- Structure. The way your services are structured creates aggression or frustration.
Customers need your help with a problem but they’re not hearing back or getting help in a timely matter. It’s easy to assume that employees are lazy, but what if they’re overwhelmed with work. Take a look at your team to determine what’s going on. Make sure there are enough employees to cover the busy times. Look for any structural problem that may cause a conflict. Apologize to your customers, fix the problem, and work to build the relationship back up.
- Mismatch. Customers want service A. You offer service B. Customers believe you are offering service A.
Let’s say a store offers a price match program. A customer comes in a wants to price match a discounted product. The employee refuses to price match a discounted product and upsets the customer.
Be clear and upfront to your customers about what you are offering to them. Give them proof of your policies and help them understand what your services are.
A willingness to help and taking responsibility often leads to happy customers. When a customer calls an employee out, take responsibility as a manager. This takes the weight off your employee’s shoulders and makes the customer happy they are being listened to.
Take ownership of a situation like a good manager and you’ll be able to have a win-win situation when it comes to negative feedback.
The Review Generator is here to help businesses grow their online reviews. Through our program, our clients have seen an increase in reviews on Yelp, Google, and Facebook. Learn more by contacting us via our website, email, or by calling (818) 588-0097.
