Where is my $20.00?

One Sunday morning a nice elderly lady purchased several items from me.  A little while later she returned and told me that she had given me a $20.00 and that I had short-changed her.  It was policy to keep all $20’s and larger bills under the till, so I opened the register and lifted the till only to find that there were no $20’s at all. It was early in the day and I hadn’t done much business yet.  When I told her that I didn’t have any $20.00’s I thought she would say, “Oh, I must have been confused.”  Instead, she looked me right in the eye and said, “I hope someone steals money from you when you are old!”

I didn’t even know what to say…I knew I hadn’t cheated this woman, but she absolutely believed that I had.  Nothing I said in any way improved or solved the situation.  She stomped out furious, I lost a valuable customer, and I personally felt angry and frustrated.  

What could I do?  What would you do?  Remember, it’s easy to help most customers, in fact I absolutely believe that about 95% of customer interactions are what you would call “normal”.  It’s the other 5% when you need to stop what you are doing and literally say to yourself, “Oh oh, this one is going south in a hurry, what am I going to do about it?”

Once every one of your associates learns this critical lesson, they will be able to handle almost any situation that ever arises.  There are two key things to remember when things start going in the wrong direction:

1.     This customer is a 911 right now stop whatever else you are doing and focus on just this customer.  If you don’t, there is no chance you will turn the situation around.

Remember:  The first thing the angry customer wants is your undivided attention.

2.     Is this a one-off situation or something that is going to repeat day after day?  Usually the angry customer is upset not because of some ongoing problem in our business, but rather because something “unusual or unexpected” happened.  If that is the case, the key is to remember that

You can do almost anything needed to solve this and the impact on the profitability of your company will be negligible.

What should I have done?  Should I have given that customer $20.00 back?  But you might be thinking, “That’s no way to run a business…you’ll go broke!”

How often do you think a situation like this might occur?  If it’s a ‘one-off’, then you can solve it without worrying about setting a ‘precedent’.

The Essential Lesson:   My job is to help my customer, every customer, leave satisfied.