How good customer service changes minds

Needless to say, customer service takes up your time.. And, time is money.

However, good, friendly customer service will take you a long way - even at the expense of time and money in the near term.

Here are some straight-up bullet points on the benefits of providing good customer service.

• You'll learn what's important to your customers. This will help you understand their needs more, providing valuable data and insights that will translate to building better products.
• You'll learn where to put your focus and where not to put your focus, streamlining your time and efforts. This leads to pivots, perseverance, or abandoning for something else with more potential.
• You'll improve your communication skills and how to talk about and sale your product in understandable and desirable ways.
• You'll establish meaningful relationships, who have connections that may lead in assisting your current product's, or even future products, growth.
• You'll create raving fans. You need them. Raving haters are lot easier to get and are more damaging as people tend to be more vocal with what they don't like. Get raving fans on your side, encourage them to provide glowing testimonials, and help spread the love. ❤️

One tip for customer service and interfacing with disgruntled customers, just remember to take whatever is being given to you and don't dish it back. Be as respectful and humble back as you can because you never really know someone else's circumstances and it's safe to assume they're in a stressful state-of-mind. This is basically the "customer is always right" attitude. Not to say that there isn't the occasional need or value in "firing" certain customers, but that's not the first (or second, or third) stance you should take.

Here is an anecdote that recently occurred with a Cleavr customer I had. This customer was a monthly subscriber who, all of the sudden, filed complaints with their credit card company and were trying to refund monthly purchases for year to date.

Obviously, I was annoyed as they have the ability to cancel a subscription, the TOS are clear on refunds, and I wasn't too excited about the prospect of fighting over payments with their institution.

So, I collected myself, put myself in a position of where I was trying to be empathetic with a potential reasoning of contesting charges, and wrote the user a respectful email, trying to understand the situation.

The user responded back, thanking me for reaching out, letting me know they thought they cancelled their subscription in the beginning of the year and that they were in process of filing more grievances with their institution for the remainder of the year's months.

How did I respond?

I went ahead and refunded the remainder months so they didn't have to fill out more paperwork on their side and then counted the contested months as a loss in our Stripe account. I also let the customer know that they could let me know anytime if they wanted to check out Cleavr again and I'd be happy to provide an extended trial.

Certainly, an annoying thing to have to do. But, there is no need for me to stress about it, no need for the customer to stress about it, and misunderstandings like these are bound to happen - so no need to make things personal.

The results?

Well, the customer was appreciative of how I handled the situation and ultimately did decide to call me up on the extended trial offer and then signed up for a yearly plan and provided some valuable feedback on some features and integrations they are looking for.

In the end, everything worked out for the better!

Of course, this won't always be the case but it certainly feels good and provides an energy boost when it does. :-)