Let Your Customer Service Team Destroy Your Business In 4 Easy Steps!

Pretend for a moment that you’re brainstorming ways to make your business brand…unforgettable.

Now, pretend for a moment that you’re anxious to break away from all of the usual prescriptions for offering excellent customer service, and you’d like to take a 180-degree turn into new territory.

Let’s suppose that you’ll “shake things up” by eliminating your current customer service team, replacing them with employees who are eager to execute the worst type of service—the type that’s designed to leave your business brand resembling scorched earth.

This isn’t some fantasy either; it’s commonly done. In just four simple steps, you can tank your profits and implode your business! Here’s how:

1. Make tech support and other help a mission impossible

You already know that shoppers often require assistance during their buying journey. They’ll have product questions that need answers, or they’ll need assistance with standard questions such as pricing, or even site navigation.

And while some retailers make it easy for shoppers to find the help/FAQ section, you’re not going to make things so easy. You’ll create a help/FAQ link at the very bottom of your site , and bonus points for making the font too tiny to be recognized! If you’d really like to confuse and infuriate your end-users, then place your help/FAQ section link in the most obscure location of your home page (or don’t even make one at all).

Even more bonus points if you bury this link on the second or third page of your site’s navigation! And whatever you do, don’t avail the services of your customer support team on social media, live chat apps, email, or via telephone. Like your customers’ concerns really matter…

2. Encourage an uber-personal atmosphere in your workplace

You’re more concerned about your brand as a cool place to work than you are as a great company to do business with, right? So here’s one strategy to use: encourage your customer service team to treat their workplace like their high school hallway.

Laugh with your team when they hold personal conversations that your call center end users can hear on the phone. When your customers call in to your call centers with too many questions, simply instruct your reps to place their phone on mute- they’ll be free to roll their eyes and mock callers among their co-workers.

Is the caller making your call center rep feel intimidated with too many questions the rep isn’t equipped to answer? Simply look the other way while your rep accidentally hits the disconnect button on the call. After all, part of your job is to manage your average minutes per call, and pesky callers eat into your goals. Your bottom line should always come before customer satisfaction anyways, right?

3. Institute the Sorry Charlie rule

You’d think that consumers would use their basic educational skills and read any fine print on your website that applies to their transaction, right? So why are they contacting your business with questions and concerns regarding the language of your disclaimers? And why do they become upset when your customer service team dismissively reminds them of what your website content not-so-clearly spells out, regarding policy?

This is why you’ll need to train your customer service team to invoke the “Sorry Charlie!” rule. It’s the universal rule that states that regardless of how frustrated, foiled, tricked, or confused the customer feels, they shouldn’t have agreed to your sorry terms of acceptance. But since they did, Sorry Charlie! Too bad, so sad.

4. Ignore customer requests for refunds

This is a tip that you’ll only be able to implement after you’ve ensured that you’ve hired the most stone-cold, ruthless customer service reps around. If you have, then here’s how to pad your profit margins while sifting out useless customers—you simply ignore any requests for refunds.

For example, have you informed your customer that the product they’ve ordered is out of stock (Why did you do this, by the way?), and now, the customer has requested a refund? Ignore that and force another product down their throats!

After all, they came to your website to shop, right? So make them spend money, or at the very least, don’t give them a chance to save money. How do you ever expect to scale your bottom line by honoring refunds?

But if after at least seven email requests later, you finally decide to offer up a refund just to get rid of the bothersome shopper, make sure to wait at least 4 days to initiate the refund. Might as well play a little game of cash-flow and and hold on to that extra money for as long as legally possible, right?

You could also try and send another offer instead of a refund. Customers love it when you ignore their requests and instead force feed them more sales pitches!

Will this work for your company’s benefit?

In theory, your business brand should effectively turn into a figurative toxic wasteland after implementing these tips (and others). But here’s the curious thing:

Many companies continue to thrive after implementing many of the same tips, in real life, in real time!

In fact, Forbes reported that Comcast continues to enjoy healthy profits despite its abysmal customer service practices. Many other large corporations are noted to have similar success. Why? Because they can get away with it. These companies with virtual monopolies don’t care about you. They care about their bottom line.

But chances are great that your company isn’t a huge conglomerate like Comcast. So if your goal is to destroy your company’s brand in a blaze of glory, then proceed with the aforementioned tips at full throttle!

Tagged brand, business, call center, Customer, customer service, refund