Anyone ever successfully made it up to a pissed off client?

Question

I have a client who purchased a hefty amount of licenses. They wanted to add more, we said we could turn that around quickly.

HOWEVER- we had no idea that us switching quoting/contracting systems would make that near impossible. Client is about to finish out a free month and the system could not compute that. My internal team took two weeks to figure this out and report back to an understandably angry client that this is impossible, they will not be able to add licenses until their free month expires.

They communicated a quick turn-around time internally for the folks waiting on those licenses, and they had to backtrack. Again, reasonable.

Which brings me to my question- have any of you successfully turned around a similar situation? Would sending them gift cards be lame? Any advice? They're in the middle of a professional services roll-out with a top notch proserv consultant, so I'm certain we can deliver value, but I'm looking to rebuild trust on top of this.

Accepted Answer

I think your fine because their "pissed off" is wanting to use more of your platform. Give them a discount on their first quarter or something to make up for the missed opportunity on there end or provide some other level of white glove service and youre good.

If you handle this correctly it can create a huge amount of goodwill with them and open the doors for further upsell in the future

Answer

Sure, make things right/give em a discount.

Answer

I had an inbound meeting booked into my diary the other day - inspected the company to externally qualify them and thought fuck sake it’s another marketing lead that isn’t right for us. Anyway, hopped into the zoom call and it was an agency working on behalf of a client trying to find solutions behind optimising our software as our client had   Been considering ditching us. 
Long story short with our team work and this agency the client is now paying 5X times more for our service!

Answer

Oh hell yeah, some of my largest clients historically were from me turning a frown upside down!  The reality of sales is that if it can get fucked up by a system, or support team, or anything -- it absolutely will, so if you are going to be successful long term you better become a master at taking turning disappointments into "great customer experiences".   Also, NEVER promise something to a client you haven't confirmed first.

Answer

Years ago, my first introduction to a new customer for me was him yelling at me on the phone about how terrible everything was and how horrible we were - it was incredibly vitriolic. He went on for 15 minutes while young newbie ISR me sat on the other end not saying anything. He finally calmed down, at which point I could stammer out, "what is your desired end result" or something similar (and most likely not that polished). He told me, and it was actually reasonable. I told him I'd see what I could do, got it done, and from then on, he was extremely calm and professional with me, and actually purchased more from us a couple of months later.

One of his colleagues emailed me as we were resolving the initial, introductory customer satisfaction issue, and finished with, unsolicited: "oh yeah, Jim's a raging asshole. Everybody knows it."

Answer

Maybe a discount. You have to be careful with gifts since it could be seen as bribery.

Answer

Be direct, be sincere, be transparent. Be very specific about what happened and it took you by surprise. Tell them you will do everything in your power to resolve this and the situation has been escalated. Everyone cares so much that management and above is working towards a solution.

violasyd

Anyone ever successfully made it up to a pissed off client?

11 comments

violasyd

Anyone ever successfully made it up to a pissed off client?

11 comments

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