Bad Romance: 10 Phrases Never to Say to Your Customers

Your brand’s image isn’t defined by your logo. Your message isn’t controlled by your latest carefully crafted ad campaign. Your reputation isn’t wrapped up in your website.

In today’s age of social media, each and every one of your customers holds a megaphone, and he who holds the megaphone controls the message.

As a result, every single interaction your customers have with your brand shapes not only the way they perceive your company and its values but how they share and spread that perception to others in their circles.

So in this world where every word-of-mouth message has the potential to be amplified hundreds or even thousands of times over, what can you do to protect your brand’s good name?

Of course, when times are good and everyone’s happy, it’s not too hard to provide a positive experience. But what about when things go wrong? What do you do when you’ve got a disappointed, frustrated, irate or even irrational customer on your hands? That’s when your problem-solving savvy is really put to the test.

In situations like these, it’s critical to ensure that every employee at every level of your company is thoroughly trained in tactics for transforming a conflict or complaint into a positive experience.

Here are 10 phrases you must absolutely, positively never ever say to a customer when your brand’s reputation is on the line:

That's our policy...

You care about your policies, but you know who doesn’t? Your customers. All they care about is getting their problem fixed.

Using policy as the justification for why you can't achieve this goal will fall flat every time. Of course you can’t let your customer walk all over you and it is sometimes necessary to draw a line, but you have little to risk by finding ways to work within those policies to offer an innovative solution.

There's nothing I can do...

This statement will make any customer’s blood boil. When you say “There’s nothing I can do,” what they hear is “You and your business don’t matter to us.” You might as well throw in the towel and walk away.

There's always something that can be done, even if it requires a little creativity and compromise. Make sure to give your employees leeway to improvise when necessary. A minor concession costs nothing compared to the impact of an angry customer blasting you on Twitter.

What you need to do is...

When customers call, they’re looking to you to fix their problem, not to be told how to fix it themselves.

Of course, there are some situations where it’s appropriate and even necessary to walk a customer through the steps required to solve a problem. Just be sure to choose your words carefully. The difference between saying “What you need to do” and “Let’s try this” is conveying the sense that you’re on their side and that you’re committed to working together hand-in-hand until their issue has been resolved.

I'm new at this...

Again, nobody cares. You might as well tell a customer that they should hang up, call back and hope to have better luck in reaching someone more competent.

Rather than exposing your weakness, simply bring in someone with more expertise and experience to help navigate this sticky situation. Your customer will appreciate the hands-on team approach, and you’ll benefit from learning from a pro.

No...

Ouch! Never, ever drop the "no" bomb. If you don’t make a concerted effort to solve the problem at hand, you can kiss that customer – and every other existing or prospective customer who will listen to their tale of woe – goodbye.

I don't believe...

I'm not sure...

We don't...

Take your pick, but these are all thinly veiled ways of saying “no,” which we’ve already established is the not the right answer. Save your breath and spend your time and energy looking for ways to be helpful and find viable alternatives.

There’s no one else here you can talk to...

Unless you are literally a one-man operation, customers know you're lying when they hear this statement. There's always someone higher up that can step in.

Telling someone there's nobody else they can talk to is tantamount to saying, "You’re not worth our time." This isn’t going to diffuse their anger and will likely send them packing, irate enough to leave horrible reviews all over the Web.

I don't know how to help you with that...

This phrase is problematic even when the best of intentions are meant by the employee offering support.

Sometimes a customer will ask tough questions. Instead of saying you don't know what to do, take a proactive role in connecting them with the correct resource within the company who can handle their problem.

That's not my job...

Wrong. No matter who you are or what your job title is, keeping your customers happy is your number one responsibility. Just do it.

I hate my job...

This company sucks...

These types of statements tend to surface when both the customer and the employee are in a state of emotional upset. It’s the equivalent of telling a customer that they're not going to find any help here.

Bad-mouthing the company is never the right answer, no matter what the situation. It can do immeasurable damage, and in reality, even the angriest customer doesn’t really want commiseration.

They don't care about your opinion. They’ve taken the time to give you a chance to make it right, and they want a solution.

If you find yourself reaching a breaking point where you feel the need to make statements like this, take a step back and clear your head. You may not feel that you’re getting the support you need from your company, but customers don't need to hear this. If necessary, ask if you can put them on hold momentarily while you "search for the solution." Then take some deep breaths, get help and do whatever you need to do to rejoin the conversation with a positive attitude.

{Nothing...}

Silence is the absolute worst thing a customer can hear from you.

If it’s necessary to put a caller on hold, don't keep them waiting long. Even better, get their information and tell them you’ll call them back (and then make sure you do – promptly!).

If they’re asking tough questions or getting frustrated, responding with silence will only add fuel to their fire. But that doesn’t mean you must have the right answer on the tip of your tongue, either.

Starting with genuine empathy is a great way to diffuse the situation. Even a simple, "Yes, sir, I can see why you are upset. Let me see what I can do to help you out," will buy you some time to organize your thoughts and collect your composure so that you can confidently work toward a mutually agreeable solution.

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Applying Science to Social Media: Analytics 101

These days, the importance of using social media to connect with customers goes almost without saying. And with a variety of channels to choose from that offer direct access to millions of people at no cost, what’s not to like? Well, for one thing, there’s the issue of measurability. While the barriers to entry are next to none, how can you assess your company’s performance in engaging with all those existing and potential customers? After all, social media doesn’t conform to any of the familiar metrics that we’ve used to evaluate traditional mediums for decades. You can’t sum up your interactions on Facebook or Twitter in terms of rating points or share. Furthermore, what constitutes a good result for one company may not apply for another. What if yours is a service-based business rather than one that sells tangible consumer goods? Or what if you’re charged with managing social media for a ministry or nonprofit? Your standards for success will likely be completely different than those of a for-profit entity. The good news is that there are many tools available to help you gauge the overall health of your Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts. Even if your company doesn’t have the funds or the manpower to devote to managing your social media presence full-time, there are no-cost and low-cost options available to help you wrangle the ambiguous concept of engagement into quantifiable figures.

Free solutions

Let’s start with Facebook. The good folks at Facebook offer very helpful performance metrics via their aptly-named Insights feature, but trying to process this data can be like drinking from a fire hose (and one that changes fairly often) unless you know how to filter what you need from what you don’t. Here are a couple of simple calculations that you can perform to distill this raw data into meaningful information. At any given point in time, you can gauge the basic level of engagement on your Page by dividing the number of Monthly Active Users by the total number of Lifetime Likes. Multiply that figure by 100, and you’ve got the percentage of your fanbase that has interacted with your content in some form or fashion during the past month. Because Insights information is kept private and made available only to a Page’s designated administrators, there aren’t any industry benchmarks against which you can rate how your performance stacks up. However, what you can and should do instead is track your own figures over the course of several months. Is your engagement percentage dropping? Climbing? Holding steady? Keeping an eye on these trends will help you establish benchmarks for your own company and give you a feel for the types of tactics and campaigns that get the greatest response. Beyond that, you can determine whether your content is connecting with users or turning them away by comparing Total Likes to Total Unsubscribes. Divide Total Unsubscribes by Total Likes, then multiply by 100, and you’ll find the percentage of people who’ve left your page. Obviously, the goal here is to achieve as low a percentage as possible. Some unsubscribes are inevitable, but hopefully you’ll be looking at single digits. If your percentage is greater than 10, it’s time to scrutinize your content strategy to see what might be driving people away. What about Twitter? Their native platform is notoriously difficult for data analysis, but fortunately, there are a plethora of third-party toolsets that use Twitter’s API to crank out stats for your account. HootSuite is the platform of choice for many social media managers, largely because in terms of ease of use, they’re hard to beat. Once you get acquainted with the interface, it’s pretty easy to get a snapshot of who’s retweeting your content, who’s talking about you, and who’s asking questions that need your attention. You can either monitor this activity manually or set up reports to be automatically generated to give you a global view of the health of your Twitter presence. And did I mention that their Basic plan is free for up to five social profiles?

Almost-free options

What if you need more flexibility and data-filtering power than the free version of HootSuite offers? Then you might want to check out their Pro plan. A minimal investment of $5.99 per month will get you access to advanced reporting tools that will help you monitor sentiment and track social reach as well as the ability to add an unlimited number of social profiles. TwentyFeet also provides some promising tools at a very low cost, although they’re a much newer company without a proven track record established as of yet. However, unlike HootSuite, they offer tracking for YouTube (along with Twitter and Facebook). You can track one Twitter account and one Facebook user profile (not Page) free of charge, or you can add additional profiles for $2.49 per profile per year. Yep, that’s per YEAR, not per month. That’s a pretty incredible rate for the types of monitoring services they offer. The primary benefit of going the paid route with companies like HootSuite and TwentyFeet is the reporting option. If yours is a smaller company with limited resources, it’s much more efficient to be able to pull reports on demand rather than having to spend a lot of your own time crunching the numbers to gauge your performance.

Better information, better decisions

While this is by no means an exhaustive evaluation of all the available services that can help you track social media metrics, these solid, highly affordable options offer enough data to give you a clear view of your engagement across various platforms. Dive in today, and discover the difference that the insights you glean from these toolsets can make in your ability to guide and direct your company’s social media initiatives.

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