Taking negative customer feedback

[annie24]

Can your company offer options (instead of “go find someone else to explain it to you since you don’t trust me” you tell them about your special package just right for them.)

Option A: Basic overview of quantum mechanics (up to _____ hours); Free with purchase

Option B: More detailed, overview plus How to get started (______ hours): Additional $Fee

Option C: Quantum mechanics (_______________ hours): Additional $$Fee

Bonus package: ongoing support by subscription. $$$

 

Basically, find a way to offer variations and make it work for both parties.

 

This is so timely, we recently had a company meeting and the last half was focused on how to expand options B and C, because there is this gap in our business, and it is one that would greatly help the customer.

[annie24]

I’m pretty annoyed actually. That customer #2, he is emailing my male coworker about the data analysis, not me. My coworker has never done that data analysis. My male coworker said “I didn’t understand a word of the email.” My coworker didn’t even forward me that email. (Who knows, maybe he talked crap about me and that’s why he didn’t forward it.) but it’s like, I know I’m a good resource, I suspect he just doesn’t want to hear my explanations because I’m a woman.

[Batya33]

I’m pretty annoyed actually. That customer #2, he is emailing my male coworker about the data analysis, not me. My coworker has never done that data analysis. My male coworker said “I didn’t understand a word of the email.” My coworker didn’t even forward me that email. (Who knows, maybe he talked crap about me and that’s why he didn’t forward it.) but it’s like, I know I’m a good resource, I suspect he just doesn’t want to hear my explanations because I’m a woman.

 

I would just let that roll off your back. Completely. Let the coworker deal with data analysis as he sees fit. Just not worth the stomach acid -you know you're proficient at it and they'll realize that in time.... or not.

[annie24]

My coworker just forwarded the email to the internal “quantum mechanics” team - I’m confident that they will say the same things I said. But I’m sure the customer will listen if it came from men. :/

 

my boss is totally not alarmed. He’s like “this is a small potatoes account.” He’s praised my work on my biggest account, and I think for him, keeping that customer happy is way more important.

[Wiseman2]

Who is the coworker? Someone who does the same thing as you? A member of the sales team? Try not to make it about "I'm a woman hear me roar". Why take it so personally? Some customers have a better rapport with some people than others. Who cares? Don't make yourself crazy.

My coworker just forwarded the email to the internal “quantum mechanics” team - I’m confident that they will say the same things I said. But I’m sure the customer will listen if it came from men. :/

[annie24]

My coworker and boss are male. They both told me they think customer #2 doesn’t believe me because I am a woman. Our internal quantum mechanics team will talk to the customer this week. My coworker thinks he will listen to them because they are male, but they will say the same thing I said. It’s frustrating.

 

I was was glad to meet up with some coworkers last week. They told me their stories of customer complaints and that kind of helped me see that it happens to everyone eventually. One person got a complaint for fixing the problem too quickly? And another got a complaint for too slowly (she told me she was trying to go above and beyond and too the extra time to make the fix perfect.) that woman told me the customer didn’t explicitly say they didn’t like her, but asked the company to send (male coworker) next time.

[mustlovedogs]

If a customer doesn’t like you because you’re female, nothing you say will help, so don’t take it personally.

 

And always be sure to clarify when working with questions. Clarify timelines, expectations, deliverables, etc. Both examples above demonstrate your coworkers didn’t do a good job of that.

[annie24]

My manager and the sales manager are involved now. They are talking to customer #2 to try to resolve his complaints. My manager assured me he has my back.

[annie24]

If a customer doesn’t like you because you’re female, nothing you say will help, so don’t take it personally.

 

And always be sure to clarify when working with questions. Clarify timelines, expectations, deliverables, etc. Both examples above demonstrate your coworkers didn’t do a good job of that.

 

With one of the cases, the engineer told me he got the notification there was a problem with the instrument when he happened to be in the neighborhood. He asked the customer if he could come over in an hour to fix it and the customer said yes and he fixed it and was nice to his face, but then wrote the complaint about the timing. Will this customer ever get same day service again? Probably not.

[Batya33]

With one of the cases, the engineer told me he got the notification there was a problem with the instrument when he happened to be in the neighborhood. He asked the customer if he could come over in an hour to fix it and the customer said yes and he fixed it and was nice to his face, but then wrote the complaint about the timing. Will this customer ever get same day service again? Probably not.

I

 

It depends how badly your company wants the business and the references.

[annie24]

I

 

It depends how badly your company wants the business and the references.

 

well, this guy sounds like he prefers 2 day notice, so it sounds like that is what he will get from now on.

[annie24]

I got my nails done today and was reminded about the completely crazy customer complaints they get. Someone goes on Yelp and posts a bad review, then a person isn't allowed to perform that particular service anymore. :/ My manicurist told me about the time that there were a few people in the salon and someone asked her if she had kids, and she said no, she had a son who died a few hours after birth. Someone who was in the room complained to management that she shared this story. I mean, rather than feel sorry for the woman who lost her only child, you go and complain to management? That's messed up.

[annie24]

A positive update: my boss has been happy with my work lately and thinks I've been going "above and beyond" and gave me a bonus. :) I was really happy, it was so nice of him.

 

I've kept my phone mainly out of sight of customers. If we have a break and I need to take a call, I'll tell them, 'I'm sorry, I need to call my boss at 3 PM to give him an update on xyz" and they understand. If I need to use the computer for an extended time during one of our breaks, I tell them where I'm going (in the cafeteria, for example) and tell them to call me if they need me to come back or they have a question.

 

2 weeks ago, I had my phone so away, that I didn't realize my coworker was locked out!! I knew he was going to be late that day, so the customer and I started on some work, meanwhile, my phone was away and he was texting and calling me to open the door for him, and I didn't see it, lol. He was not too pleased with me. He stood outside for 30 minutes until we noticed he was outside. He called the customer as well, but the customer didn't recognize the phone number so he didn't pick up. lol.

[catfeeder]

CongrAts on your bonus, Annie. Sounds as though it's well deserved.

[Batya33]

Glad to hear it!

[Jellybean9]

Congrats on the bonus!

 

From a quick skim through. Sounds like you've worked hard for it :)

[annie24]

Resurrecting this thread. Ugh. I've had some ups and downs at work, mainly ups. I had a good performance review and got a good year end bonus which was nice (like a month's pay). Earlier this week, a customer wrote to me to really say that he's impressed with the service me and the engineers provided him and that he wants to have my boss's email to tell him that himself. So that was a nice win and it's good to hear. We don't always hear positive things.

 

Then yesterday...... I spent most of last week helping a lab with their new purchase - teaching them how to use it, doing test runs. I was there for almost 4 days and my boss came along for one of the days. This is normally a 2-day training so I actually provided some extra sessions to them that most of our customers don't get. I asked them to reserve a conference room with a projector, but they did not, so I had to email the slides to everyone and go over them in a circle. So that was frustrating, but whatever. It's not ideal because having a "classroom" setting for the presentations is much better. Then they asked me to come in in the morning but when i got there, they told me they had another meeting to go to, so I just sat there for half an hour catching up on emails.

 

Anyway, I went over all the material (my phone was always away!) I'm very honest and if I don't know something, I tell them I don't know it and I look it up and give them the answer. Anyway, my boss was there for the training one of the days and he thought it was good. The lab is already using some of our other products so they already knew a lot. Anyway, they were all smiles, said everything was good no other questions.....

 

Then I get a call from our sales woman saying that they complained. They were apparently texting their boss that I was doing a horrible job, didn't seem to know what I was talking about, and not paying attention to them (btw, their boss is on vacation so what are they supposed to do?) My boss is standing right there, and I'm right there, so if they had a question, why did they not ask me? I wasn't ignoring them either, someone else was asking me a question and they asked me to move off to the side so our conversation didn't bother the people doing the work/calculations. So apparently they hated my training and want someone else to do it all over again. Ugh

 

It's so frustrating and I talked to both my manager and sales. Sales wants to send in someone new right away. Schedule-wise, that's not really possible. I've had other interactions for the last year with another member of the lab and their boss for the last 6 months and they've all seemed fine with me. First I was sad, but now I'm really angry. They didn't schedule a conference room for me, they tell me to come in at 9 AM and then I get there and they tell me they have another meeting to go to, then they tell me that they want a new training (desipite the fact that we did the experiment, twice, and it worked). Most of the time, the official training is just 1 experiment.

 

I told sales (who is meeting with the PI) that I want a bullet list of the topics they didn't understand. I sent them all the slides/materials, I sent them training videos in advance and other information, so what do they feel I didn't cover or they didn't understand? That's ok not to understand everything right away but it's so rude, that they're texting the boss that I suck while I'm literally there to answer their questions.

 

I honestly never want to see them again. My boss said that's ok. It's a shame too, because I live really close by, and the whole last year, I've been getting emails from people in the lab asking for urgent help and I've always tried my best to answer their problem as quickly as possible (even if they don't respond to my emails back in a timely manner).

[Batya33]

Ugh -that sounds so frustrating Annie!

[catfeeder]

Was this the same place that had the phantom problem that launched this thread?

 

I wouldn't permit the complaints to be anonymous. I'd ask the person who received the complaint to name the source, and I'd ask my boss for a plan on how he wants to address that person directly.

 

Consider each site to have certain common archetypes: there will be one stakeholder who champions your products and services, otherwise who follow that champion as their leader, and at least one insecure person who's flailing at their job and may target you as a scapegoat.

 

if you can mentally grasp that this is a potential outcome at any site, you can craft plans in advance as to how you and your team will handle such complaints. There's no need to justify all you delivered, especially when it's above and beyond normal services and appeared to succeed in spite of roadblocks and customer fails. When you can just factor in the odds of stumbling into scapegoat territory, you can have standard contingencies you reach for without internalizing and personalizing the situation.

 

It's never fun to encounter unfair criticism from customers, but since your experience is teaching you that customer sites can be landmines, you can adopt of view of these situations as a mere Plan B, and then put that plan into operation and write it off emotionally as meeting your jerk quota for that quarter.

 

Head high, and build the jerks into your plan. You'll thank yourself later as you roll with the next one without much concern for your stomach lining.

[annie24]

It's not the same lab as the first complaint, but from the same hospital. Maybe the people who work at this hospital are more difficult than the average customer? I don't know. It's definitely a pain to get into that hospital. Every time I go in, they act like it's the first time I've been there and they've even not allowed my coworkers in at all at times. Even with an appointment to meet someone.

 

As of now, the plan is that the sales person is going to meet with the lab director and the people who complained. My manager is going to call the lab director to speak to her as well. I'm not invited to the meeting. I told the sales person, and I plan to tell my manager, I just don't want to go back there again. If they can find someone else to go in and teach them, then fine. Just don't bother with me again. The last thing I need is to go in alone, and then find out they complained about something else after being all smiles. It's so frustrating.

 

I'm pretty attuned to the "walking into a minefield" when the instrument is broken and the customer is under a deadline and I know that tempers can be quick. But this has been different - walking into a new installation training, people are usually cheerful and happy, but maybe the lab members were on high alert because the senior people weren't there to tell them what to do or what to expect. Who knows.

 

I think they won't "call out" this customer on bad behavior because they are a very large account and a source of tons of $$$$ in our area. I think they'd just rather do whatever this customer wants, apologize for the bad experience, and then send them someone new. Both my boss and the sales person said they have total confidence in me. I just feel horrible. I need to toughen up somehow. I definitely don't want to go back there. I don't want to work with them at all if they think so little of me. I don't know - my previous experiences with the lab director and the senior technician were positive, but they were on vacation during the training so I'm guessing that the complaints came from the junior people in the lab (the ones texting their boss that I sucked during the training). sigh......

 

On a weird related note, my male coworker took over the two accounts that complained about me at the start of this thread. Both gave him good reviews and my male coworker wound up winning an award for doing a good customer service job. I'm happy for him, he's very good, but part of me feels crappy that he had to swoop in and "fix" my situation, and he's going to have to do it again.

[luminousone]

Annie, since it was the same hospital network, there may have been some conversation or a connection from the experience at the beginning of the thread.

 

Another thought- possibly sexism. Or racism (not knowing your ethnicity).

 

If you did everything you could, and your boss thought you did well, then you let go and move on.

 

As far as the projector and the surprise meeting change - communication might have helped as reminders/confirmation a few days before. "Is the projector reserved and will it be set up and ready to go?" (Or just bring your own projector.) And: "Just reconfirming our meeting with John, Justin, and Angela on x day at 9:00. Which room is reserved for us for that day and time?"

 

 

After your training, be sure to send an immediate follow up email thanking them for their time and giving them an opportunity for feedback and further questions.

 

Other than that, don't take it personally - it is probably nothing to do with you but more to do with them, and the system.

[annie24]

Yes I thought about that - it is possible someone from the previous lab knows someone in the current lab and they had a conversation about me which gave them a bad impression of me at the start. :/ There's another man in a whole different lab that I know hates me (but honestly, he hates everyone else at our company and is rude to us, even when we've gone above and beyond to resolve his problems). I saw him last week in passing and he looked at me like I was day old garbage.

 

Yup, I will have to do that in the future - send the follow up emails before the meeting to make sure they have a room for the presentations. This is honestly only the second lab that has ever not booked a conference room. The first was earlier this month, they are a tiny start up company in a tiny office with only 2 employees and no conference room. So I understood that, but this is a large hospital with dozens of rooms to book.

 

I am so good at taking things personally. :( My boss tells me this job is sometimes more psychology than science. I often think of just teaching the facts - this is how the machine works, this is how you use it.... I'm not always thinking about their emotional needs. That's hard to judge. This lab is actually quite experienced with our technology, so I didn't want to be patronizing to them, so I may not have delved into the basics as much as I did at the other tiny startup company. I saw that the lab was doing one thing incorrectly that's been known to cause problems with the instrument. I pointed it out to them and they said, "well, that's how we've always done it." I said it's not our recommended practice and we highly recommend not doing that, but I can't make them stop." She looked at me like she didn't believe me. Actually, the people who I think complained are fresh out of college, really green. I'm not sure if it's them or not but they are the ones who were probably texting their boss that I sucked. Maybe they didn't understand the technology as well as the senior people in the lab. Whichever coworker goes in next, I will tell them to look out for the fact that they are doing X incorrectly and that can cause huge problems. Maybe they will believe the second person.

 

ugh. My boss and the sales person just said don't worry, we will figure this out. Nancy, the woman who previously held my job moved to a different role in the company. She said she was trying to help a customer who was complaining about the instrument. Her first step was to inquire about their experimental protocol, they insisted it was not their fault, they wouldn't share their protocols with her. So she had really a tough time trying to figure out what was wrong if they wouldn't share it. Finally the guy at the company sent a really nasty email to everyone at our company he could, from the mail room guy to the VP, telling them that Nancy was the absolute worst. Nancy's boss just said the customer was being unreasonable but it would be best to take her off the case. So they did and they sent in a different coworker, Greg, who is big and tall and intimidating. He sat down at the customer site and insisted on seeing their protocols, end of story, wasn't going to help them unless they showed him. So.. that is somehow that we just try to fix it. Sometimes we'll send in someone else and just hope that they'll respond better to someone else.

[annie24]

i used to be this company's customer for many years. I remember when i was trained (actually, Greg was my trainer), I think i absorbed about 15% of Greg's training. Not because he's bad or the training was bad- he's very good and smart. Just that the subject material can be dense, and I knew I wasn't going to understand it all at first, but it would come over time as i used the machine more. I guess not all of our customers think that way - i don't know - maybe some are expecting it will be crystal clear right away?

[mustlovedogs]

I see a lot of facts and statements in your post, and you acknowledge that the emotional side isn’t quite there.

 

So my two cents: I have probably two dozen or more salespeople who call on me and my colleagues. We’ve had to ask the really technical ones to be off our account. Why?

 

We don’t need really technical. We need someone who answers our questions clearly, is responsive in a timely manner, and who is easy to get help from. Oftentimes, the really technical ones are so bogged down in the details that they can’t simplify it for customers or they’re interactions are awkward and it makes it harder to work with them.

 

Our very best salesmen is not technical at all but is super charismatic. He gets us our answers in a dumbed down way and is easy to talk to.

 

Not saying any of this is true or not true for you, but that’s my experience.

 

ETA - If your training isn’t clear or expectations aren’t aligned, that’s on you and the other members of your team. If I had training and could only reasonably expect to walk away with 15% of it, I would be pissed. That means the training isn’t done correctly IMO. But that’s why the sales people need to have these conversations in advance, align expectations, and establish a plan to reach competency.

[annie24]

But I’m not a sales person - I am the one teaching the technical aspects. It’s like, you can’t really learn how to drive a car in 2 days. I mean, you can probably teach someone the basic rules of the road and basic operation on how to drive, park, reverse. But it’s just going to take time and practice to be good at it, especially navigating in challenging weather for example or parallel parking in a tight space- more than 2 days. And we’re certainly available to help, I’m happy to come back when they need extra training or need questions answered via email.

 

to add - they already proved their competency - twice with 2 good experiments. My friend I was talking to about this just thought they needed and wanted mite hand holding. I thought they did a good job in training and they were ready, I guess they did not and they didn’t trust me.