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5 Ways To Avoid A Negative Customer Experience In Your Aging Care Business

In today’s article, you’ll learn why people are more willing to share a negative experience rather than a positive one and how you can drastically improve your customer’s experience by implementing the five methods listed below:

We’ve all been customers at some point in our lives, and we’ve all had both good and bad experiences as such. But it would seem that the bad are outperforming the good, at least as far as online reviews are concerned.

This is because in today’s digital world, it is super easy for anyone to post a comment online that can be seen by thousands of potential customers… and it’s human nature to be more willing to post a bad comment or review for your aging care business, rather than a feel good, positive review. It’s just how most people are wired.

The poor review may not even be warranted. It could just be that there was honest miscommunication or the individual has something personal going on in their life like a terminal illness or other family issue, that is causing grief and you happen to be the “chosen one” that they get to take it out on.

I’ve experienced this personally in my own businesses:

After serving more than 20,000 customers, I’ve run across a handful of people who were more than willing to try to “take me down”. The common denominator in my experience was that the handful of these customers reporting negative reviews, were not really caused by anything my company actually did or did not do, but were caused by honest miscommunication, such as not reading a welcome email all the way through, or forgetting the day of the month that a membership re-bill would occur, or failing to check their email altogether.

In every case, I went above and beyond to make it right and so should you. The problem is that once the comment is posted, the customer rarely will take the comment down, even if you rectified the situation and the customer went away thinking you were their new best friend. They either forget, are too busy, or simply just don’t give it much thought. However, in some cases, these customers became amazing referral sources because I had a genuine interest in helping to make things right. This can work for you as well.

Some Will Not Be Satisfied No Matter What You Do, and It’s OK!

Every once in a great while, you may run across someone that you will not ever please regardless of what you do. In this case, it is in your best interest to NOT take it personally. It is not your fault and it is not fair to yourself to take that on. Just do your absolute best to assist this person and to make it right if you can, then move on and let it go, putting your positive energy into your other customers.

After working with many businesses from many different markets, I found that the same issue holds true in all of them. Most of the people sharing negative experiences had been disgruntled by a previous negative experience from another company and vowed that they would not be “made a fool of” again; so they turn on their computer and start posting.

In my experience, most of the people are reasonable and if you go above and beyond to help them feel better or correct the situation, they will be satisfied. This is because nobody and no business is perfect. They know this and you know this. You will make mistakes, but it is important to be willing to go above and beyond to correct these mistakes immediately, that makes the difference in the eyes of the customer.

Now, with that being said, a MAJOR problem does exist with A LOT businesses, and that is they fail miserably at customer service. These businesses are not all intentionally trying to sabotage their customers. Some are too busy trying to oversee every area of their business and are spread too thin, causing one or more areas to suffer. Others are just self-serving and are more focused on short term profits and hence their customer service is lacking.

These businesses are often the cause of the disgruntled customer described above, that end up taking it out on you. This also makes it a little easier for you to stand out from the rest, although it may take some extra effort.

The Solution:

The solution is not only to avoid as many negative customer experiences as possible, but to strive for outstanding customer service. Good customer service will not compel your customers to share their experience, but outstanding experiences will.

Here are 5 quick ways (Plus 3 bonus tips) to improve your chances of providing an outstanding customer experience that most businesses overlook:

1. Make sure it is very easy to make contact with your company. Having a “Contact Us” tab on your website and including an email address, physical address, a customer support chat link, and a phone number can help.

2. Make sure to respond to every question or comment that you receive and return any phone calls as soon as possible. It’s the old saying that if you provide an outstanding experience for your customers, they will tell 3 or 4 other people, but if they have a negative experience, they will tell thousands!

3. Ensure that if you have a customer support person assigned to answering your phones or fielding your emails, that this person is very friendly, genuine, helpful and engages your prospects and customers with high positive energy.

4. Keep clear from bombarding your prospects and clients with one offer after another without including anything of value. The “buy my services, buy my services, buy my services” method will drastically reduce your results. Providing value and creating massive goodwill in your market, will send your profits to new heights.

5. If you are collecting email addresses (and you should be), make sure that it is as easy to unsubscribe from your list as it was to join it. Making sure that every email you send includes a one-click unsubscribe link will typically take care of this issue, but if someone asks you to unsubscribe them, it is highly advised that you see to it.

In today’s marketing world, email sender scores and reputation is directly related to the success you achieve when using all forms of marketing especially digital marketing. Keeping your nose clean will pay you back in spades.

Here are three bonus tips from Paige O’Neill, CMO at SDL:

1. Seek and destroy. Figure out what isn’t working. SDL research found that 35 percent of clients identified long response times as the biggest problem with their experience, while another 30 percent blamed poorly-trained employees. It’s crucial to do some self-examination to determine what your company’s problems are. Then you can work toward fixing them. “Resolve these issues by listening to your customers,” O’Neill said. “What made them unhappy? Finding the root of the problem gets your brand one step closer to solving them.”

2. Own your mistakes. Customers have selective memories: They’re much more likely to remember a bad experience than they are a good one. Expectations are higher than ever before, and, when not met, the damage can be significant. But many customers are also forgiving, as long as businesses don’t ignore their mis-steps. “Despite experiencing these fallouts, most customers want to resolve issues with brands,” O’Neill said. “Businesses must take ownership of where they missed the mark and offer an apology accompanied by a meaningful attempt fix to the issue.”

3. Merge man and machine. According to SDL, your customers are much more likely to blame mistakes on people than technology. Four out of five blame human error for their experience going wrong, while technology tends to get credited with more positive aspects of their buying journey. Follow their lead and find a winning combination of humans and technology to create the best customer experience. “Organizations need to audit their systems and ensure that both the technology and people representing the brand are working well together to deliver flawless experiences,” O’Neill said.

Remember, we’re all in this together!

Anthony Simonie

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About Anthony Simonie

Anthony Simonie has more than 19 years of successful business development, marketing and sales experience. He's the founder and co-founder of multiple successful businesses and has helped more than 20,000 people increase their success in life and business. His focus is to provide proven marketing, sales strategies and advice that enables smart, but overwhelmed business owners to attract (and retain) more clients, while increasing profitability, eliminating wasted effort and frustration, and creating more quality free time to spend with their families, rather than being enslaved to their businesses.