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Online Business Ethics Part 2: Terrified Of Complaints
By Tim Gross - Internet Business Blog | November 7, 2008
In part 1, I listed the 8 different types of Internet businesses (in terms of ethical approaches). In this post I’m going to focus on #1, the “newbie trap”:
1) Terrified of getting a customer or even subscriber complaint of any type. Terrified even of getting criticized by non-buyers
I’m sure you’ve been in a retail store and witnessed a hapless employee getting verbally ripped to shreds by an angry, agitated customer who believes they’ve been treated badly. Sometimes those customers have a point. Sometimes they don’t.
A small percentage of customers (and people in general) are a huge pain in the butt.
- A movie theater patron screaming at the ticket box girl because the movie he wants to see isn’t playing there, demanding that it be run.
- Attempting to return stained, soiled bedsheets for a full refund after being used for an entire year (the store has a 30-day return policy)
- A customer throwing ice cream at the employee who made it because she didn’t like the taste
-You get the idea.
If you think those people aren’t online, you’re sadly mistaken. In fact, because of the anonymous nature of the Internet, more people behave even worse.
Here’s a sampling of stuff I’ve dealt with doing business online:
A customer purchases a downloadable product late at night, then emails support late at night that they weren’t able to download the product. At 7:30am Eastern time (4:30am Pacific, where I live) the email again saying they haven’t received a response yet and that they must be getting scammed, demanding a refund immediately or they’re going to do a chargeback on their credit card. (Remember, this all occurred after-hours, even though our contact form clearly states that our customer support operates 8:00am-3:00pm Pacific time.
Customer angrily calls our office angrily demanding to know what in the hell we think we’re doing charging their credit card… And then sheepishly apologizing once they’re told what the charge is (they forgot they purchased, etc)
Accusing us of spamming them when they receive our email newsletter even though they subscribed to it in the first place.
Filing a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau Online because they installed free software we offered and had trouble uninstalling it… They never even contacted us for help first.
In fact, over the course of 5 years and well over 100,000 sales, my last online business received a grand-total of 2 complaints to the Better Business Bureau Online, and neither complaints were from actual customers! One was regarding a problem uninstalling free software, and the other was someone who said they kept receiving emails from us after they unsubscribed.
That’s something I’m very proud of. But that doesn’t mean it’s possible to keep everybody happy, and you just have to get used to it.
Even if 99 out of 100 customers say your product is great, the hundredth person will say it sucks, that it’s a ripoff, that it’s not worth what you’re charging (not matter what you’re charging), that it doesn’t work, that it’s a scam…
No matter how good your product is, no matter how good your customer support is, some people will be unhappy. Every once in awhile you’ll miss someone’s email asking for help. Somebody will send a support email to the wrong place and you’ll never see it, or it’ll get eaten by a spam filter, etc. (Side note: I highly recommend using Help Desk software or at least a Contact Form instead of just having people email you directly)
…And I haven’t even gotten into the criticism and complaints you can get from people who haven’t even purchased anything from you yet.
The moral of the story: Sell good products and provide good customer support, and thicken up your skin for the inevitable complaints you’ll get every once in awhile. It’s all part of doing business. 
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November 19th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
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