20) Contribution
from Jan Mattocks – A Better Bounce – Croydon.
This month I would like to
share with you further, my feelings regarding a national Blacklist of Customers
and how to diffuse a difficult situation over the telephone.
But first, my husband
answered the telephone a couple of weeks ago and very quickly passed the phone
to me. The man at the end of the phone chatted about bouncy castles for a
while - so I thought everything was normal. Then he said that it wasn't
fair that there were no castles designed for the old people with zimmer
frames!!! After the initial shock of what he'd just said, I asked him to
repeat what he'd said, so he did. I then replied that if he wanted to
wind up a company then to chose someone else and replaced the receiver. I
thought it was just a prank call. Next morning the phone rang and after
introducing myself, he said he was from Heart 106.2 fm and did I remember the
'odd' call from yesterday. Apparently the purpose of the call had
been for the caller to get the words "zimmer frame" into the
conversation as many times as possible. The more times he said it, the
better the prize was. At the time of the original call I was live on air
to however many people listen to Heart. Highly amusing!!!!!
Now to another issue, in the
last edition of the newsletter, I asked for comments on how you felt on a
blacklist of customers held in a central location. To date, I have
received only one reply which was positive. No one can judge the true
feeling of black lists if there is no real response at all. If you think
its a good idea, tell me (either phone or email) or if you thinks its a bad
idea, let me know also. If there is no true response then there wont be a
blacklist.
Earlier this month I had a
very irate customer on the phone complaining bitterly that our driver was 10
minutes late picking up the castle. Over the phone I was shouted at
constantly. I tried very hard to say to the customer that she could either
hold on while I contacted the driver on the mobile or I would call her back
. I continued to get shouted at. While this was going on I deduced
that the customer was in fact drunk (customers that haven't been drinking are
usually quite nice and don't shout) and that I would get absolutely no
where. I sent a text to our drivers phone, who called me back on our
other line to tell me that he was five minutes away. The customer was
still shouting - only now it was that the driver was 25 minutes late. I
stated quite clearly that the driver was 5 minutes away. She eventually
stopped shouting when the driver showed up at her house and apologised for
shouting when she realised that I had in fact being telling her that he was
nearly there for the last 5 to 10 minutes of the conversation. The secret
in these situations is to not shout back - no matter how much you want to -
People expect you to shout back at them if they are shouting at you, they don't
expect you to remain calm.
That's it for this months
newsletter, please remember to email or phone me about the blacklists, my email
is janmattocks@hotmail.com and my
telephone number is 020 8239 9613.
Next month I will write more
about black listing and also how to improve your telephone manner.