The Worst Customer is Your Best Friends

Sometimes in the middle of pressure people do bad decision.

Its the fourth day of Ramadhan and thanks to our head of organization announcing four day holiday till 30 of May. So I am at my own home enjoy my leisure time with books.

Yesterday I manage myself with a yummilicious books haul but I’ll spare you the books title on another post, enough for you to know that my mum spend me a non fiction books called What Would Google Do? By Jeff Jarvis.

As I began my reading my eyes catch this phrases ‘your worst customer is your best friend’ then all the worst customer, the stressful moment spent with them just pop out into my head. Some of them even with the worst dealing ever, till this time had been our regular customer and unfortunately the rest of them had never appear on our shop or mobile phone anymore.

What happen to the worst customer that turns into our regular customer?

I shall say, we manage to detect their real concern and giving them what they want or what they already expect us to give.

Find someone who has the problem. Find out more about the problem by engaging in conversation. Solve it. Learn from it. – WWGD?, Jeff Jarvis

As a services industry, this phrases always appear whenever I want to shift my perspective on the customer shoes:

Why bother to do things if we can pay other people to do it for us? 

You see.. From the phrases alone I already know that the customer expect us to do something that they cant do or didnt have the enough time to do so. As a service provider we need to achieve they expectation with or without pushing our limits.

Lets take this recent event as an example.

There were this customer who contact one of our sales team to order a set of banner. The customer promise to bank in her deposits at given time before we proceed the order. Till then we gonna have to hold the job as according to our policy, money must in front.

Only to know that she ordered in a very critical and urgency moment and she need the banner in a very short timespan. As a tshirt printing services we had subbed all of our offside print (such as banner & bunting) with other supplier. Then the chaos begin.

So once the deposits received, I as the designer began to proceed the banner by email like we used to do. Only to received the banner in a non solid or not sharp state. As a matter of time and panic, it was already too late to edit hence our I  just proceed the banner even it was not appear to be that sharp.

The next day, the same customer turned down the finished banner and urge our team to substitute into more sharper one.

As a member of the team of course I frust with the situation. Sudahlah bayar supplier mahal, mau minta reprint lagi.  That was all the dilemma comes in whether to refund the job or just go with it. Then once I handle the situation I manage to found what actually this customer want or specifically, realize her main concern.

She does not even know how to make banner at it best condition!

As a designer or even blogger, some of you may understand about resolution of an image used are deeply connected to the end product especially if it comes to banner. When the image you use are low in resolution what you’ll get a low image printed on your banner (local said : image pecah sebab berkotak-kotak) . Sigh. And this customer here just inserting all image she thinks nice without even bother to use the high resolution pictures.

Then where it all things falls down correctly into places.

She need to know that her banner softcopy was the actual problem for producing  a not sharp product. Once we detect the problem, we explained the situation, discuss even more and hence an agreement had been made.

So what to learn?

What I learned from that situation, we must hear our customer and continually discuss with them if any obstacle happen during their job process and if problem happen, try our best to provide solution. I always like how my business partner dealing with his customer using this words:

“Kami boleh tolong..”

Its mean, we the services industry knows our limits and to ensure our customer satisfication they need sufficient information on how their products gonna turn out to be. Helping other to solve their problem is a good perspective to use in discussing the matter.

And I happen to love this phrases whenever I’m dealing with my own customer:

“Beginilah.. ” 

Its means, the act that I’m going to do is not actually a custom, but for our dear customer, those who share a bit of their rezeki, we are willing to give them the best of our services.

P/S : I may say the stories above had been edited to merge into this blog themes. Lols.

Do you have your own experience regarding worst customer turning into your bestfriend?

Please do share on the comment below. 😀