Don’t Be Jen from Appleton
Customer service, as you may have heard about a skabillion times, is not only the right thing to do because, HELLO! you love your customers, it’s also a way your front-line employees can keep you from becoming the next villain du jour.
For example, take “Jen from Appleton,” a Bath & Body Works manager in Wisconsin who raised the ire of Az4angela (real name: Angela), a vlogger who hilariously recounts her experience trying to purchase a candle. As you can imagine, it did not go well. After driving across town in Packers game related traffic, she was told that the candles she had reserved were not available and proceeded to have a level-five meltdown. The incident happened over a year ago, but the video was recently discovered (thanks to Tumblr) and it’s inspiring all kinds of internet weirdness, tributes and memes.
The “Jen-cident” just underscores the reality that brands live in today. The wonderful and terrible thing about the Internet is that people latch-on to stories like this and pull them into the public eye. At that point, all a company can do is try to react in a way that turns a positive into a negative. Some have done this successfully, others not so much. The best way? Avoid the situation all-together with good customer service.
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Are you reality? People want help from the live person in front of them.
When Angela asked for compensation for her troubles, Jen from Appleton told her to call a number to speak to a live person—that’s when all Hell broke loose. Why? When you’re talking to a person and then that person hands you a card to call another person, it’s frustrating. What’s even more frustrating is when they act like that’s reasonable.
Repeat after us: your front-line employees are live people. Give them the power to make your customers happy or, at least, train them to be more empathetic. Had Jen from Appleton said, “Listen—I totally understand you’re frustrated and I’m so sorry this happened. I unfortunately can’t help you, but these people can. Here’s the number—I’ll call them for you now and explain the situation if you’d like,” things might have gone differently. In reality, people can level with other people. Be reality.
Don’t try to sub mini candles for the three-wick variety.
People aren’t stupid. When you pull the old switch-a-roo and expect them to be fine with mini candles when they’re expecting a giant three-wick monster they’re going to be M A D. Jen from Appleton told Angela that, while they didn’t have what she was promised, they did have the mini candles of the scent she wanted and she went BALLISTIC. She didn’t want no mini candle and neither do your customers.
Deliver on what you promise. It’s so simple, but like a good margherita pizza or a perfect-fitting pair of jeans, it’s also so difficult to do. Try anyway. Then when you fall short of someone’s expectations you have a built up reserve of goodwill to draw from and help guide you to a solution.
Just. Be. Nice.
What seems to have set off Angela and what typically causes any adult to completely flip out is that an employee was initially rude to her. That set the tone for the whole encounter, escalating it to nuclear. By the time Jen from Appleton started in with her baloney, Angela was having NONE OF IT.
You can’t tell your employees this enough: be nice to people. Even if they’re being rude, even if they’re being stupid, even if they’re being unreasonable—be nice. You don’t have to give them everything they want and no, they’re not always right, but being nice will diffuse a lot of situations before they become a nightmare. Train your people to rise above and let a cooler head prevail.
Then give them resources to escalate that person to someone who can solve their issue so that the problem doesn’t become a gif.