Handling returns from unhappy customers
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 1, 2018
Handling returns from unhappy customers
By Seth Godin?
“But first I’ll try to make you feel really bad”
Here’s one strategy for handling returns from unhappy customers:
1) Let them know you don’t accept returns.
Explain that it must be a user error.
Explain that the customer must have lacked care or intelligence or ethics.
2) Explain that you’re willing to accept a return, but just this one time. And
3) Explain that you’re now going to put the person on a list, and you’ll never sell to him ever again.
Do all this in one continuous statement, without pausing for a response.
This has happened to me more than once.
What puzzles me is this: if you’re going to give the customer a refund, why not make them delighted by the process?
Why not create an aura of goodwill? At the very least, both of you will have a better day.
Even better, perhaps one day someone will mention your company to this former customer–I wonder what he’ll say?
One tip: if you say your meta-goal out loud (or jot it down) before you start an interaction, you’re more likely to consistently create the outcome you seek, not the one you hyperventilate yourself into.
Adonis Diaries 
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