Home Small Business Tips

Asserting Your Rights as a Customer

As a home small business owner, you are also a customer of those who supply you with products and services which support your business venture.

Have you ever run into a situation where one of your suppliers provides little or no response to a problem? You feel frustrated and powerless to do anything to resolve the situation.

As internet marketers, we have more power and influence than we realize. You can sometimes use this power and influence to help resolve such situations.

Case in point: I recently signed up for a new service I wanted to try out. After about a week or so, I decided that I was not interested after all, so I consulted their website Terms of Service and dutifully submitted a support ticket as instructed, giving all the pertinent details and asking for the account and the monthly charge to be deleted.

All good so far. I got the normal automated response that the system had received my ticket and it would be addressed within one business day.

Hmm ... after 5 days there was no response. I logged into the ticket system and saw that nothing had occurred. So, I raised the priority of the ticket and inserted a response asking when someone was going to look at this.

Still no response. I waited another 5 days (I'm a patient fellow). This time I raised the priority to critical and inserted the following response:

"I have been more than patient waiting for a response to this issue. If I do not receive a positive response to this issue within 24 hours, I will initiate the following escalation plan:

1. I will submit 1 ticket per day requesting account deletion for 1 week, then 2 tickets per day, and so on until I get a response.

2. I will begin a massive blogging and online Press Release campaign detailing your company's unresponsiveness. Your website claims you pride yourself on good customer service. Lets see some of that."

I got a response within the hour! The issue was resolved and my account and monthly charge were deleted, and I was happy.

What can we learn from this? First, I think it is important to be patient. Don't expect instant resolution. But if something hasn't happened after a reasonable amount of time, come up with an escalation plan and tell them what you are going to do. Be nice but firm.

Use your power wisely and proportionally, but never be afraid to use it. And above all, always provide excellent service to your own customers!

Bill Brine-Home Small Business Coach
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