Why Bad Service Costs More Than You Think | 032

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:00:00

Welcome back. Today we are going to examine the fourth in a series of five episodes dedicated to legendary business, from rats to riches. This is my Amazon best selling book, and there's also a workbook. We have been visiting all of the rats in legendary business and just having a

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:00:21

conversation about them. Now, a little bit about my book, legendary business from rats to riches. When I wrote the book, I wanted a short book that would have a lot of little stories and a little chapter so that you could read it really easily, say, in 20 minutes or 15 minutes, put the book down and

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:00:39

then pick it up again another time. So in order to do this, I wanted to tackle five of the most common mistakes business owners make, how to recognize them and how to fix them. And so a friend of mine told me, you know, business books with stories always are more impactful. So instead of just

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:00:59

writing one story I wrote five. So for each of the five Mistakes Business Owners Make, there's a rat. Now, why rats? Well, let me tell you. I decided to use the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. And if you know this story, Hamlin is infested with rats the town, and so they call eventually they call this Pied

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Piper, this man who comes and plays his pipe and magically hypnotizes the rats and runs them out of town. And so they hire him, and he comes in to play his pipe and lead the rats away. They agree on a price, and the pied piper does his job, runs all of the rats out of town and to the river where they

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drown themselves. So when he goes back to the town to collect his pay, he is suddenly faced with, well, you know what? We changed our minds. We're not going to pay you. Now, to be perfectly honest, the pied piper story does take a very dark turn in the story. There, he then comes back and kidnaps their

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children as a as payback for them not paying him. So we don't kind of go into that deep, dark part of the story. However, it does exist. So in the legendary book, legendary business, from rats to riches. Book, there are five rats. All of the rats are infiltrating your business. And because they're infiltrating

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your business, they are eating your time and your money and your energy and just generally wreaking havoc on your business. So today we are going to talk about the fourth rat in the book, and his name is Charles rat, and Charles has really good reasons for really bad customer service. So let me tell you

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:02:55

about Charles. Charles is a very hard working rat. He does everything in his business. He happens to be a solopreneur. Well, that means he's got no employees, and does everything himself. That's everything, waiting on customers, doing billing, doing the taxes, cleaning everything up, doing

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the work. He does everything himself. And Charles is busy. He is busy all of the time. He's a very busy rat, and because he is the only person there, he does everything, and he's the boss. And Charles loves to be the boss of his business. He loves to control everything and all of his busyness, he is the one that

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is in control. And after a while, you know what? Charles gets really, really, really tired. He's working very, very hard. He's doing everything. He's doing everything himself. And he sometimes can come across, well, let's just call it gruff. After all, everything is on his shoulders, he is

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:04:02

responsible for everything in his business. I mean, everyone should understand that sometimes he gets a little overwhelmed and frustrated. No one should be complaining because he's a little gruff or maybe even rude sometimes. I mean, he he has a lot to do. He has a lot on his shoulders. And you know, one of

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the things that he doesn't like is, well, interruptions when he is working and he's trying to get stuff done and a customer walks in, oh my gosh. Now he has to stop what he's doing and change his focus and go wait on the customer. It's exhausting. I forget about it. Whenever the phone rings and he's in the

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middle of something, it is just absolutely infuriating. And then you know, what else his customers do? They ask the same question. Question over and over and over and over. Charles has been in business for many years. He has heard the exact same question 10,000 times without exaggeration. Everyone comes in

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:05:16

and asks the same questions. You know, just to speed things along, sometimes Charles will just shortcut the conversation, interrupt them and tell them the answer. He just answers. He knows what they're going to say. I mean, he's done this 10,000 times, and it's really frustrating because, you know,

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he's been in business a long time, he knows what he's doing, and it's very frustrating that they don't understand that he just knows what he's doing. Why are they asking him these questions? Just give me the work and I will get it done for you. Stop asking all these questions. You know this is you've heard it

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all. He's got so much going on. He's very busy. People are interrupting him. They're asking him questions. He just thinks that people should understand he has really good reasons for the way he interacts with his customers. He's exhausted, and he's doing it all. You know, if he had somebody that he could

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:06:14

hire, then he wouldn't have to do it all. However, it's just Charles and you know those customers that get on his nerves and he's kind of rude to them? Well, he just figures, you know what, there's plenty of people out there. I'm just gonna get new customers. It's okay if they don't come back. There's plenty

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of fish in the sea. Charles tells himself, and he really wishes that he could hire someone, but he can't seem to get enough clients in so that he can get to the point where he can hire somebody. I mean, one of his customers had the nerve to complain about his prices and ask why they were so high. And

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Charles just said, I'm running a business here. I have to keep the lights on. He can't even keep the lights on sometimes. So how can he possibly hire someone? And he is not understanding that

Unknown: 00:07:14

he is dis he is a

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disadvantaged rat. Charles is disadvantaged because he is. He is incapable of seeing that the way he's treating his customers are keeping them from coming back and doing more business with him. Now, I think that we can all say that on one day or another, we've all been Charles

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rat. He is the sneakiest rat. He comes in on those days, whenever everything has gone wrong, you woke up late, spilled coffee on yourself, on the drive in, the printer is not working, and now you have a vendor on the phone demanding something, and a customer walks in. How does that feel? You are just so

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overwhelmed. This has been a really crap day for you. Can't they understand that? Well, I have news for you, if you're running a business, no, they can't understand that, not when they walk in the door. They've come to you to have a solution to their problem. You're there to fix something for them, and

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so we need to remember as business owners that when our customers come in, it doesn't matter if we've had a bad day, it doesn't matter if we're doing everything. It doesn't matter if we're overwhelmed and frustrated. What matters is what is happening for the customers. So let's just say you came in

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and you had that bad morning and the printer is not working, and the customer walks in and you have had it. You are at the end of your rope, and the customer comes in and you start to respond to them from that place, the customer is going to think it's their fault that you're just a rude business owner. Why

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am I even here? I'll just go find somebody else. So what we need to remember is that they're not they are our allies, right? They want us. They want to do business with us. They've come to us to help, to get help with their problem. So we need to make them our allies. So it would be perfectly appropriate

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to say, oh my gosh, I am so sorry if I seem a little bit off. I've had quite a bad morning, and that printer will not cooperate with me. Now, chances are most people will say, Oh my gosh, I had a bad morning too, or I've had I've been there. I've had those days, and my printer is a real brat

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too, and we've taken the frustration we. Shared, not the whole day, not everything that's gone wrong, but just a little piece of, hey, what's going on for me is not, does not have anything to do with you. And they now know that something is a little bit off in your world. And most times, we will get an

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ally, and they'll maybe give us a little bit more grace, as opposed to just meeting them in that high energy state, that frustrated state, and not letting them in on the secret, not telling them what's going on, because they will, I guarantee you assume that it's their fault, and if it's their

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fault, that you can't they came in and you were just rude or unhelpful or whatever, serving up bad customer service. They're just going to say, you're not somebody I want to do business with. I will be perfectly honest with you, I just had an experience yesterday at a business that I have been

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:11:00

frequenting, and I had such a bad experience, I have decided that I will not return to that business. Now, will I tell them that I'm not returning? Probably not. I'm just not going to go back there. And honestly, that happens all the time. If you have bad customer service, and your client, or your customer

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has just feels like this is not the place to do business. They will just leave and never tell you. They will not tell you what you did wrong, but you know what they will do. They will tell all their friends. They will tell everyone they know not to do business with you because you gave bad customer service. So we

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have to be really aware of how we're showing up in front of and to our clients. So now, well, what do we do if you know somebody, I mean, we had that bad day, we we popped off, or we said the wrong thing and we didn't. We didn't do the right thing, right? We all had those days. And what if your client

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goes out and puts a bad review on a social media platform or says something to someone? There's there are ways to correct it. If you find out that they had bad customer service, you can reach out to them and say, Hey, I'm really sorry that you had a bad a bad experience. We do care about our customers.

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We care about our business, so how can we make this right? Sometimes you can offer them a discount. Sometimes you can offer to fix the problem, if something was done incorrectly. Sometimes you can, you know, just negotiate with them and explain what was going on. And then they can go, oh, okay, I

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get it now. And you can try to resolve it that way. If they put something on social media, you can go into the social media and respond. You can, well, first try to resolve it with them, if you can, and then respond and say, Hey, we reached out to customer Susan, and we explained what happened. We resolved

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everything, and you know, she is satisfied now, and maybe ask her if she would remove the review or respond and say, yes, they fixed it. That is a really proactive way to handle it if you can't get in touch with them and you can't resolve it that way, there are other ways to work on your online reputation.

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If someone gives you a bad review, however, trying to resolve it should be your first step. You know, customer service, in my opinion, is a bit of a dying art. There's so much stuff is do it yourself, serve yourself, take care of it yourself. Gosh, even now I walk into restaurants like fast food

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restaurants, and there's nobody at the counter. They want you to use a computer inside the restaurant to order it yourself. Like customer service is just not what it used to be. It used to be a very you usually got good service. Now you might not get any service at all. So if you as a business owner,

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endeavor to provide good customer service every time to all of your clients, you know, except whenever something comes up, and we all have those days. But if you will endeavor to always give good customer service to the to the level that you are capable, you will stand out. You'll stand out because

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other people just aren't doing it anymore. It is not commonplace. It is actually exceptional. So I encourage you to be exceptional in your customer service. Now, what do we do about those times that you know, interruptions? I'll tell you. The reason that interruptions made it into this

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book is because that's my pet peeve. I used to get really. Into, like, doing a project I still do, and I've worked on it now, but I'll be really into working hard and thought process, and I'm in, especially if I'm doing taxes or numbers or that kind of thing, I'm in it, right? So whenever someone

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:15:16

interrupts me, I have an actual reaction. Sometimes it's anger. Often it's just frustration, and it's like, Gee, I was working on something. I was in I was in the flow. I had it going on. Now I have to stop and wait on you.

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:15:35

Oh my gosh. What a terrible thing to think and yet, sometimes it happens. So here's here's a trick that I put in place in my business. Anytime that there was an interruption, which was generally a customer coming in the door or telephoning, I would have to physically stop for a moment,

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take a deep breath, smile and then answer the telephone or take a deep breath. Stop. Take a deep breath. Change my change my focus. Take that smile and greet the person coming in the door. Because when your people are in front of you, however they're in front of you, they should have all of your attention, all of

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your focus, and if they can't greet them, let them know how glad you are that they contacted you. And then say, if you could just give me a moment, let me just close this book, or let me write down this note. They'll wait and they and because you've acknowledged them and greeted them, they'll give you a moment

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now. Don't take a half hour. Just write a quick note so you knew where you would know where you stopped, and then give them your full focus and attention. And I will tell you this, that if you pick a develop one of these, I call it like a shift trigger, like I need to shift my focus and my this is going to be

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the trigger. These are going to be the steps that I take to do it. It took me conscious effort for, I don't know, a month or two, whenever I was interrupted. The longer I did it, the more consistently I did it, the more immediate it became, and it went from stop, take a deep breath. Smile. Hi two. Hi. That fast I

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went through all the steps, but because they become so wrote it went really, really quickly, so I was able to change my state very, very quickly whenever I was interrupted. So think about what are those things? What's that pet peeve that drives you crazy whenever some customer comes in and has the nerve to

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trip your trigger, figure out your own shift and put that in place, practice it every single time so that you can be focused on them and be there to solve the problem that you're there to solve in their lives. Now let's talk about Charles's issue with answering questions. Here's the deal, the longer you are in

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business, the more consistently you communicate to people what you do and how you can help them, the more questions they are going to have, and they are likely going to have the same question every single time, or the same three or five questions every single time. And you will, without fail, get tired of

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answering those questions. You will have the answer wrote. You will be able to say it really quickly. You can even answer their question before they're done talking. Please. Let me caution you not to do that. Let them ask their questions. Let them ask you everything they need to ask you so that they can

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feel comfortable that you're the person to help them solve their problem, if you shortcut them, if you cut them off, if you answer the question you think they're asking, you might be wrong. You might not know the question that they're going to ask. It might sound like or start like, a question you hear

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all the time, but it might not actually be the question that they're answering. So when we cut them off, when we speak over them, when we do not allow them to express what they need to express to us, they do not feel heard, they do not feel understood, and they don't trust you. So we need to let them ask

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their questions. It's okay. Yes, you're tired of answering that question. Yes, you've answered answered it 40 times today, and yes, they're going to ask it 40 more times tomorrow. Just be okay with it. Just be present with them. Let right, put yourself in their place and and be interested. Interested in why

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they're asking the question, and if you're really listening to what they're asking, then maybe you You will find that there's something else that's in there that could be more interesting to you. You could have a deeper connection with them by not cutting them off and letting them say and ask all the things

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that they need to ask to feel comfortable to do business with you. Now, what do you do if your customer has had an amazing experience with you? Well, hopefully they tell you what a good job you did, and then you have the opportunity to ask them for testimonials, or you can send out surveys, or you can ask

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them to put reviews on Google, in every other place where you have reviews made, and you can make it really easy for them by giving them a system, writing some things down for them, and either giving it to them on paper or giving it to them digitally, so that they can know what you're looking for, for

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what makes a good testimonial. And how do you how do you like to be referred. You can ask them for referrals. If they're happy, they are going to be happy to share the news with other people. So don't forget to engage with them when they're happy as well, because nothing speaks louder or screams more

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authority than someone who has done business with you has been so happy with the work that you have done and just wants to sing your praises. They are your raving fans. They are the people that you need to really cultivate and encourage to get the word out about you. Because honestly, they would love to

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tell people what a great job you did. They don't always know how to do it, so let's give them the opportunity to share with everyone how great you are, and something easy was you could pre write something for them, or ask them three or four questions. Answer these questions in your testimonial or your referral,

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tell them what a good job we did for you, so you can capture the good service as well. So a little bit about Charles. Why Charles exists. The story about having someone say to a customer that because their prices were so high, because they had to keep the lights on, that was a true story. One of our clients

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called us up and told us he said that to them. So just understand, if you say something to a client or a customer, they might not say anything to you, but they're going to tell everybody else. They're going to tell their friends, their neighbors, they're going to tell your competition. So please be

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aware of what you're saying and how you're saying it. When you're talking to your clients, it really is important, because they are listening to everything you say. Some of the other things in the Charles rat chapter we experienced, there's lots of inspirations in there from us, because as much as we

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endeavor to have excellent customer service, it doesn't always happen every single time. The fact of the matter is, there will be days when Charles Ratt will visit your business. Here's what you need to remember. You need to admit that you that he was visiting and you did not give the excellent customer

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service you're capable of, and then you need to make it right with your clients in any way that you can. Now I do not necessarily say that you should give them a full refund of everything that they did with you with just because they had a bad customer service experience, because not everyone needs their

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full money back. Now some people do, and they'll tell you that, however, if you offer them a discount, or you offer to do the next job for them for free, or you, you know, give them a coupon for Starbucks, it doesn't matter, as long as you're reaching out and and trying to make amends and make it make it

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right. People will appreciate that you went there extra mile and that you have tried to not tried, because we don't try here, but you have made the effort to make it right. I know sometimes it's easier to bury our heads in the sand whenever we've done something wrong and somebody is not happy with us,

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but I will tell you that that is that's not the way to handle it if you want to have a good business reputation, because bad news spreads at the speed of light. Good news when you've had done good customer service. That's a little bit slower. People will will say, hey, yeah, I had a good experience here,

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but it's probably going to be when somebody says, hey, I need to do X. Have you used somebody that does x? And then they go, Oh, yes. And I had a great experience. However, if they had a bad experience, you're going to hear about it. Oh, they're going to tell their friends over coffee or wine or whatever, and

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they're going to say, don't ever do. Business with XYZ, because they were terrible. And that's just the way it works. That's human nature. It's the way things are now. So if you have when, not, if, when, Charles rat pops up in your business, and he will remember that good customer service, the customer experience

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is fully and completely your responsibility. It's not their responsibility. Even if they come in in a bad mood, it's not their job. It's yours. So I fully, fully encourage you to check out Charles rat in legendary business from rats to riches. Check out all of our rats. They are absolutely

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delightful. Oh, you know what I forgot to do? I forgot to tell you that this is a business book with pictures. And so I actually contracted with a an artist in the area, and she designed all of the rats. If you can see this on video. This is Charles. You can tell he's a bit grumpy. That's Charles rat. And yeah,

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you can color him in whatever you want to do. But I wanted to let you know that there are pictures in this book and this the chapters, again, are very short. It's actually a really good and easy read. And frankly, most people tell me, after they've read it, that they felt like I was following them around

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in their business. They're like, how do you know this? So I really feel like this is going to be a helpful guide for you. If you go to profit connectors, dot club, you can get access to the book and the workbook. The book itself is available on Amazon. You can look it up the workbook. You do need to get

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:26:44

through me, so that'll be a really easy way to do it. Just click on the link in the portal and you can get access to the profit connect it through the profit connectors dot club site. You can get access to both of these publications. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the profit connections podcast.

Sharon Galluzzo: 00:27:07

Thanks for showing up. Your future self will help you and remember it's your impact. Go and make it count. You.