It’s important to maintain customer service during disasters. When disaster strikes it will always impact your business and cause some sort of delay in your provision of services. However, if you communicate with clients and keep them appraised of what’s going on you can usually manage their expectations. Resulting in what could have been a damaging situation (delay in supply of products and services) becoming a positive situation (happy clients because even though this terrible thing happened, you didn’t let them down).
Understandably, you might be reluctant to share your problems with customer and potential customers, but there’s very little chance that they won’t find out anyway. If they find out from someone other than you, particularly if there is even the slightest impression that you’ve tried to hide the situation – there’s a good chance that the loss of trust will be impossible to overcome.
So, here are three things you can do to maintain customer service during disasters and make sure that you keep customers informed and manage expectations:
Contact customers
Let them know what the current status is and find out if they can / will wait until you’re back in action. Most times, people will be happy to work with you on a new timetable. If not, are they really the sort of people you want to be working with? Sometimes, there will be a set deadline that can’t be extended. In that case, either offer them a refund, or see if you can source the product or service elsewhere. Do this by phone or email (or even both) as soon as possible.
Place notices on your social media accounts
Let people know what’s going on so that you can manage their expectations. If you’re having a delay on fulfilling orders, then let people know. They may go elsewhere this time. But you can be sure if there’s an unexpected extended delay they’ll go elsewhere forever. And tell all their friends. Post updates as soon as possible. Then update them regularly even if the updates are just to say you have no new information. You don’t need to go into too much detail. Just let people know about what will impact them, and what you can and are doing about it.
Get some help
If you have a colleague who provides locum services when you take leave, see if they can help. Otherwise, call on industry contacts and see if you can get their help. If you’re in a super-competitive industry, think outside the box. Maybe there is a complementary businesses you could partner with. Although that sort of partnership really needs to be formed well before disaster strikes. Don’t forget, there are also many ways that your virtual assistant can help.
Customers can be incredibly forgiving when there’s a legitimate reason for any service delays, disruptions or cancellations. They just need to feel kept in the loop and invested in your business. Leaving them feeling out of the loop and let down is likely to push them away and turn them into critics. While communicating well and doing your best to solve their problems despite your own will leave you with fans and advocates. It’s not easy to maintain customer service during disasters – but making sure you contact customers early and often will go long way.
