Mistakes are inevitable. We’re all humans. It is bound to happen and impossible to prevent. Same thing with client work. When you miss a detail or the deadline, when you deliver the wrong project or have a difficult client. I’ve probably seen it all throughout my years of doing client work. It’s important to know what to do to fix things right away.
Here are 3 common scenarios that could go wrong and how I would fix them:
1. The Bad Review – You receive a bad review and with a poor rating on your business website or on your business social media account like LinkedIn. Everyone can see it.
Action Plan: Immediately reach out to the client and offer to fix the work you did. Everything is fixable for me, that’s how I think. Tell them that your business thrives on reviews and you’re committed to a great experience from your clients. Do an analysis on what happened and put a proper plan to correct your previous process. Make sure that your next projects don’t encounter the same issue so that the negative review is just a 1 off thing and never happens again with other clients. If it happens again, then that’s really bad business for you bud.
2. The Headline Error – It’s the Oops, my bad error. You went over your work 3x before sending it and even had someone read it to make sure it was correct. But somehow it passed the naked eye test, the misspelled word or huge grammatical error blunder, right smack on the headline or caption you made.
Action Plan: Reach out right away with an apology and a corrected file or post. Never sit on a mistake, it’s not going away. Learn from your mistake and put a process to imnprove it, so that it doesn’t happen again.
3. The Furious Client – This one is the scariest of them all. You think you delivered to the client what they wanted, then the following morning you get a really furious email or phone call. You promised to correct the mistake but the client won’t take it. Out of frustration, the client takes his or her anger at you will full force.
Action Plan: Listen dispassionately. Less talking, more listening. Apply extreme empathy. Use the phrase “I Apologize” instead of “I’m sorry” as much as you can. Offer a solution that will work for the both of you. If you can revise the original file, do so. Ask for additional inputs and apply it. If there’s such time to go the extra mile, this is it.
It’s important that you develop and cultivate a positive customer service mindset all the time. Put the terms of your deliverables, the process including the payment in writing as much as possible. Lastly, when committing to due dates or deadlines, make sure that your client is committed to their side of the equation, because if not, inform that your date will have to move also. They may be your client, but you are a strategic alliance. It requires teamwork to make that dream work!
December 15, 2020 Author Khel Lawrence
I have multiple experiences with this especially when I was in the hospitality industry. It is really difficult to handle distressed customers because you really don’t know the root of their stress.
Luckily, I was trained to handle these types of customers. What I normally do is to just be empathic with the customers and understand their present situation.
December 20, 2020 Author Mike Ulep
I agree with the list and actions mentioned above. The key tip here for all is to be an active listener to your customers. Learn how to be receptive of their comments/suggestions and learn from them for you to improve your services for the betterment.