I suppose it was inevitable. First shock set in with the crash, then fear, now anger. Many of our retail clients are noticing an increase in complaints and frustrated customers. Even my wife who works for a Dr’s office has noticed folks being more on edge. All this should not come as a surprise. I recall working in San Francisco during and after the big earth quake. The same thing happened . It just got testy there for a while. To be honest I feel the same way. So what do we do about it? How can a marketing company help? First of all with the tone of your marketing. Flip jokes about paying to much isn’t going to help things. As we have said, joking about bailout is wrong. Don’t create gimmick ads that trick people into coming on down! Offer advice and help in a I can relate way, not a joking way! Also the way your customer service folks deal with customers may need to be adjusted. Be more empathetic. Be more patient. your customer may not realize they are on edge. Also realize that folks that had great credit may not be able to pay as fast as they did, and that they are upset about that. Embarrassed to talk about it. So if you are a car dealer for example, how you ask folks if they can make the payments might trigger a response that you don’t want. In other words, they don’t buy the car, when all they were was embarrassed. There are clever ways of finding out what they can afford with out making them say it. Right now we are promoting an empathetic, we know how you feel tone for one of our clients. Another is offering very low payments, and very good interest rates. And us, we are being very flexible. Our company is a different company depending on the need.

Topics: Angry CUstomers, Marketing