As many of you know from 2005-2006 I was the customer care manager for a large regional property management company in California. My main role was to connect with residents who were not satisfied with their experience with us and try to make them satisfied again. In a year’s time I had about 3,000 contacts with residents over the phone, via email, feedback cards or letters.
My friends thought I was crazy to take the job, seeing as I had to interact with angry residents all the time. And while there were a few times (okay, maybe more than a few) when I thought my friends were right and I was crazy, I have to tell you that dealing with residents wasn’t the only difficult part of the job! And sometimes it wasn’t even the most difficult part of the job!
Allow me to explain.
Once I finished speaking with a customer about their negative experience I then needed to contact the onsite team (typically the manager) to get their take on the situation and see if I could find a “win-win” solution to the problem. I found that many of the onsite teams were not receptive to finding “win-win” solutions, especially if they felt that their customers were wrong (or lying, or signed the document, or is gaming the system, etc.), so they would often say “NO” even after repeated attempts to get them to change their mind.
Then I’d let the customers know that the managers wouldn’t change their minds, to which the customer often said I want to contact their manager, so the issue would be escalated “upstairs” and I would involve a regional manager, or sometimes vice president, into the situation. To be honest by the time it reached the “second floor” the response would be to give customers what they wanted, or offer a compromise situation, because the leaders didn’t want to get bogged down for hours on an issue involving $20.00. Of course, this would often infuriate the manager who felt that corporate was undermining their authority, yada, yada, yada.
Eventually I got good at asking the onsite managers one question; and when I returned onsite as a manager I remembered this question and I would ask it of myself when dealing with an angry resident…
Is it worth it??
When you’re dealing with an angry customer I’d recommend you ask the same question when you find yourself digging in your heels and saying “NO” to their requests. Is this fight really worth it? Is this issue worth spending hours on? Is this request for one day rent credit worth the aggravation of this complaint being escalated to corporate and getting everyone in my leadership involved? Is it worth it for me to alienate a customer over a $5.00 paper towel holder in the kitchen?
I know some of you are thinking, “Well, what about Fair Housing??” and yes, you do need to take Fair Housing into consideration when making decisions-which is why I recommend you contact your company’s fair housing authority on guidance on matters. And in my personal opinion Fair Housing was never intended to be a shield that housing professionals would hide behind to provide poor customer service or no customer service.
And yes, some issues are worth the aggravation. And no, I don’t expect you to say “yes” to everything your customer requests!
I am suggesting though, that before you say “no” the first time or the fifth time, and you see the customer digging in his/her heels and you start to dig in your feels that you take a moment to pause and ask yourself, “Is this worth it??”
