Two for Tuesday: Dealing with Angry Customers

You can’t please every customer – but it’s worth the effort to try and solve their problems. An ugly incident can ruin your day, but without a successful resolution that incident can ruin your reputation when the sour word spreads.

Here are two tips to help you diffuse a tense situation.

Shut Up & Listen

Let the customer air their grievance fully before responding. Actively listen while they tell their whole story even if they start to rant. Sometimes they just need to vent plus you have the opportunity to hear what they want or need to turn the situation around. If you interrupt them before they are finished, you might not know the whole story, you might miss valuable clues, and you might just tick them off more.

Deliver More

You’ve probably heard the phrase under promise and over deliver. If you say you’ll replace a broken vape device, throw in a free e-juice. A little something above and beyond what you promise is a great way to say that you are sorry for the inconvenience, and leave the customer with a good feeling about the experience with you and your business.

Recent Articles

With Halloweentime upon us, ghosts and goblins all around the world are gearing up for the annual celebration of the macabre. Between dressing up in fun costumes and making caramel apples to taking our kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, there’s no shortage of things to do at the end of October; but did you know that some of the earliest traditions revolved around the use of incense and other herbal blends?
When I was in college, my sophomore year roommate, who went by Bear, had a two-foot-tall bong with a name. Green Lucy was a gorgeous emerald-colored masterpiece with thick, bulbous glass at the top, comfortable for ripping huge hits. It was a celebrity on our floor of the creative arts co-op where we lived. People would come from all over the house, and sometimes from other parts of campus, just to hang with Bear and get baked from Green Lucy.
Charlea came into the cannabis space as a journalist, covering Missouri’s fascinating cannabis landscape as it rapidly evolved. While reporting on the state’s medical marijuana vote, Charlea got to know a local physician who was equally passionate about legalizing medical use in the state.
Common business advice tends to view the 80:20 rule simplistically. Focus on the 80% of your store that drives profit, it says. Ignore the rest. That’s fine for the average folks. But what about those who want to boost the other 20%?
Before you've said a word, your shop is selling. The customer hasn’t touched a single product, and your staff hasn't even said hello. Your decor and layout have already done the talking, either pulling people in or pushing them away.
As VP of Operations at ATM Wholesaler and Elite Merchant Services, he’s picked up the baton from his father and CEO, Norman Koza, who passed it to him after founding this successful company over 25 years ago.