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Customers: Friends, Foes or Teachers?
Your attitude and beliefs are a mirror for your customers.

by Kitty Stein, WCAA, CWP

Thankfully, we all have far more very happy customers whom we may also call friends. They are the ones who make our work joyous. The joy is reciprocal, i.e. you mirror each other’s good and positive feelings. Then there are unhappy customers and difficult situations in which we seek to reveal the guilty party. How we handle the latter can have a phenomenal rippling effect.

How do you appear to an unhappy customer? Teeth gritted? Forced smile? Drawing an invisible line for battle? Guilty? A problem solver?

How do you feel when a customer is unhappy? Victimized? Unfairly treated? Threatened? Guilty? Determined to blame anybody but yourself? Grateful and appreciative?

How do you see unhappy customers with difficult problems? Someone who wants something for nothing? Someone who wants to blame you when it is not your fault? An opportunity to learn?

How do you handle unhappy customers? Procrastinate facing the problem? Determine to show them they are wrong and you are right? Take them to court? Resolve the problem as quickly as possible and determine who is financially responsible later? You don’t care whose fault it is because you sincerely want that issue resolved to the happy satisfaction of all? (This does not necessarily mean that in all situations, you absorb the financial cost! We’re talking attitude here.)

YOUR CUSTOMER’S ATTITUDE
Years ago, the Ford Motor Co. did a study that revealed satisfied customers tell eight people; dissatisfied customers tell 22 people. With the Internet, you can only imagine how many people your customers will tell of their experiences with your company. Obviously, dissatisfaction could have a great impact upon your business.

Another long-ago study discovered that 90 percent of unhappy customers who “fire” a business do not tell the business that they are not coming back, much less why. Today we are all aware of the unreasonable lawsuits that are filed. We lose extremely valuable information when a customer does not tell us why they are unhappy.

Each customer with a problem will react differently. Some recognize, as we all should, that life has its little ups and downs and those annoyances do not matter in the grand scheme of the universe. Yet there still are those customers who will deny any blame or responsibility and immediately become demanding and belligerent. For whatever reason, reasonable or not, they are unhappy and they want the problem fixed their way immediately! Because they present an attack strategy in expressing their discontent, the normal human reaction is one of defense, which is, in effect, an attack itself as it attempts to lay guilt upon the attacker.

YOUR ATTITUDE
How did you do with the first four questions I asked? All of us have experienced those reactions except for possibly the last reaction.

Who hasn’t felt, if not expressed, “It is not fair! It is not my fault!”? Who hasn’t commented out of vengeance, “What goes around comes around”?

Yes, I have said these things in the past. It took years for me to get to the point of accepting “the customer is always right.” Notice I said accepting. By that I mean I resigned to be the victim.

It has taken many more years to see and understand that I was the one making myself the victim and making myself miserable. “We are what we think about!” I’m sorry, but I forget who said that, but it is so true. The true freedom that we humans have is that we can be whatever we want to be by putting that thought into our minds. The mind does not differentiate fact from fiction. In that respect, it is like a computer. It does, believes and behaves the way it is told to. No other person on this Earth can break into your mind and make it something different. Only you can do that.

I hope that if I give you a choice of joy and peace verses misery, guilt and fear, you will choose joy. If not, then don’t bother reading on.

Because of your mind and spirit given to you by the universe, you can choose to be happy all the time! It is that simple. In fact, I believe God wants you to be happy all the time! He never put any conditions on happiness. When you start getting uptight about a difficult customer or anything else that might cause stress, just remember it doesn’t have to be this way! You may want to visualize changing channels on the television from a horror flick to a comedy.

Practice looking in the mirror. How do you look when you are happy? How do you look when you are angry, sad? What you see in the mirror is what your customers see. Is that the real you that you want your customers to see? Keep in mind that body language and vocal tonality contribute to the complete attitude picture.

MIRRORING AND MODELING
The preceding exercise is not just for you. It also is for the benefit of your customer. Understand that if you are angry, your customer sees that and your anger feeds his. Humans do have intuition—the sixth sense—that can read things not seen or heard. If you are happy, pleasant, sympathetic, sincere and completely uninterested in blame, then your customer sees and feels that. If your anger can feed his anger, then it makes sense that your sincerity will have a calming affect upon the customer’s anger. It may not be visible, but it will help him. In fact, if you have enough charisma, you actually can turn his anger around.

First, you must expect and allow the customer to sound off. Haven’t you wanted to, if not actually done that, yourself? Just be quiet and listen to him with respect. His anger is his problem, not yours. Just let the storm bounce off and consciously try to send pleasant, calming vibes to him. Do your best to see him as a very calm understanding soul. You cannot be affected by his anger unless you allow yourself to be. And remember, draperies are not a life-and-death situation. This soon will be over and in the past.

All of us have energy. Science has proven that. However, most of us do not know how to harness that energy. Wayne Dyer, in one of his books, tells of coming upon two young gangs in a high state of negative tension. Dyer deliberately walked between them sending out massive thoughts of love to them. As he walked away, he could see that the gangs’ animosity had been diffused and they were drifting away. The thoughts that you feel and believe when projected can be extremely powerful.

When your distraught customer has had his say, that’s when mirroring and modeling come in. These are terms I have learned from self-improvements education, particularly from of Tony Robbins. These terms mean to imitate by copying body language, speech patterns and movements, e.g. crossing your legs the same way, folding your arms in front of you, using the same pitch and vocal habits, etc. Mimicking is a means by which to establish rapport.

Your customer will begin to soften because what he is looking at is just like him—his favorite person! As he begins to relax, you may find that he can be led by your actions to follow your calm sincere demeanor. The reason this can happen is because you will be the mirror he is looking into. His brain will accept and believe what it sees. Your behavior is extremely important.

SINCERE CARING
The best defense is an offense of love. Do not even think about your financial expense involved. Refuse to see your customer as anything but calm, pleasant and reasonable. If you send thoughts of blame and anger to that person, via mirroring, you will receive it back.

In a recent experience, I received an e-mail from an upset customer who had purchased a product from us. Her wording clearly relayed her annoyance that we would offer such an inferior product. She was mailing the product back and expected us to pay all the shipping.

Unfortunately, this e-mail came in while I was on vacation. Before I answered her, I checked my inventory. Sure enough, the stock we had was defective. I checked my database and she had purchased with a credit card. I immediately e-mailed her not to bother to return the product and explained that I could only credit her credit card for the initial amount and that I would send a check for shipping the product back if she had already done so. I sincerely explained to her how much we appreciated that she took the time to tell us about this problem. I told her that we try very hard to maintain a high quality in our products and that she had indeed helped us to raise our standards a bit higher. I was not interested in blame or guilt, only in completely satisfying this valuable customer.

She responded to my e-mail with a very understanding tone to her message and said she had already mailed the product and to forget the return shipping. You see, she was reflecting my good will back to me. What a great feeling it is to send out a blessing and receive it back.

Yes, there are times when someone else is at fault. It may be the customer or perhaps a vendor or a subcontractor. In the latter two cases, only after you have taken care of and made your customer happy would you negotiate with them. Again, do so expecting and seeing only fair behavior from all parties. If it ends up as your cost, fair or not, take care of it, learn from it and move on. Do so without remorse or feeling victimized. Otherwise, you hurt yourself and any others around you.

YOU ARE THE MIRROR
Your life, your business is not about getting. It’s about giving. What you do and give represents who you are. According to universal law, what you do and give is what you receive. Think about that. Now look at that backwards. If you accept anger, fear and frustration from another person, then you have received what they expect in return. By accepting their anger and becoming angry, you are attacking the other person and, thus, you will receive it back again. Quite a vicious circle! If you return it with joy and love, you will receive that in return instead.

You, an individual, can make a tremendous difference in this world by giving only love and refusing to receive anger and fear. Earlier, by reading the rest of this article you implied you would rather have joy in your life than the dark alternatives. Yes, negative emotions will erupt now and then, but you can be vigilant and exercise self-discipline. Immediately say to yourself, “It doesn’t have to be this way!” Then change the channel! Now where is that remote control?