Key Takeaways:
• Managing customer expectations is a primary challenge in retail, especially when clients request repair quotes without providing the item for inspection.
• Choosing to ignore negative online reviews can be a more effective strategy for de-escalating conflict than engaging in a public dispute.
• Despite logistical complications and miscommunications, custom projects can lead to meaningful emotional outcomes through empathy and generosity.
Like many of you, I have an electronic lock on my front door. I was in the back of my store, basically avoiding people, when my doorbell rang. I went up, hit the button to unlock the door, and let the customer in. Why did I do that???
A gentleman came in and asked me if I repaired watches. I do indeed repair watches, so I said yes. He then asked me how much it cost to repair a watch. This is where my ‘bedside manner training’ should kick in, but I never took that class. I took a deep breath and risked losing this customer.
I wish I were better at these situations, but I’m not. I’m good at some things and not so good at others. But, when it comes to customers doing things like this, I’m not going to enter myself in any competition…unless it’s a race to the bottom.
It just baffles me why people do that. I have absolutely no idea what kind of watch this person owns, since I’ve never seen him before. Thus, I have no idea how much I’ll charge to fix whatever he owns. This reminded me of the jeweler who told their customer to hold their watch up to the phone so they could diagnose it. But this wasn’t my only ‘one of these’ recently.
If you Google my store, Anthony Jewelers Nashville, you’ll see my last review was a whopping ‘1 star’. A young man comes in with an elderly lady and asks if I size watch bands. I do indeed size watch bands, so I said yes. He then hands me a brand-new gents Timex watch, with the tags still attached, and a broken band. I asked him how the band got broken. He told me he tried to remove the links from it but couldn’t figure it out, so he brought it to me.
Now, so that everyone knows, not all links on watch bands are designed to come out. Most watches have only a few removable parts, and the rest are permanent. Guess which one he was trying to take apart? Yep, so I told him that the band was broken and probably not repairable. The lady with him said thank you and told the young man, “Come along now, Sonny.” The entire interaction lasted about 90 seconds.
About an hour later, I got a notification that I had a new online review. Anyone want to take a guess who it was from? Here is what he wrote: “He seemed unhappy and very aggravated. I needed a link out of a watch for my grandfather, and he told us we had broken the watch, and he couldn’t do it, but he was wrong. After a YouTube video, I was able to do it myself. Very bad customer service.”
Of course, my first thought was, why don’t you bring it back and show me how you ‘fixed’ the unfixable? Better yet, why don’t you bring it back in a week or two and show me how well that superglue is holding up?
I ignored it, but I did almost post the video of our interaction as a reply to let the public decide how unhappy I was. Heck, I might still do that, but it reminded me of a lesson I learned back when I worked in the entertainment industry. The best way to keep a feud in the papers is to keep the feud going. But the fastest way to end a feud is to ignore it. If I don’t respond, he has no reason to add another spicy comment about my tepid approach to dealing with the public. That was the method I chose. But if anyone out there wants to go to my online reviews and make a comment, well, I can’t stop you.
When you deal with the public, there are always challenges. If you’re lucky, the hardest challenge is acting humble when someone is heaping praise on you, seeing their new piece of jewelry you created for the first time, and telling you how wonderful and talented you are. But that didn’t happen with this next customer.
I don’t remember why he came in, but I remember everything that happened afterward. While in my showroom, he noticed a display of fingerprint jewelry and was drawn to the four-leaf clover I make. While talking about it, he told me that he was going to need all of the luck he could get with an upcoming major surgery. As someone who just went through a major surgery, we had something in common. Turns out he is on a transplant list. Yikes!
He wanted to order one for his mother, if things took a turn for the worse. I wrote him up, took his prints, and wished him luck.
A few days later, as I got ready to start on his piece, I couldn’t find his fingerprint card…anywhere! That’s never happened before, so I kept looking in vain. A few days later, his mother came in and said someone had called and said his order was ready. I told her it wasn’t ready and that we hadn’t called. Weird.
I told her I’d misplaced the card and asked if her son could come back in so I could re-print him. As it turned out, he was out in the car, on the way to the hospital, and wasn’t physically able to come in, so I went out to the car and got his prints in the back seat.
A week later, she called from the hospital and asked if her son’s ‘pieces’ were ready. Now, mind you, these things take 3-4 weeks on average to manufacture, and he only ordered one. She said he thought he had ordered 3 because it was so expensive. I informed her that he had only ordered one, told her how much it cost, and assured her that I would call when it was ready.
She said he was disappointed that it wasn’t ready for St. Patrick’s Day, like I promised. I said we never discussed St. Patrick’s Day. The vibe on this job was just getting worse by the day.
When I was finally finished, I called and left a message that his order was ready. A day or so later, the mom comes in and tells me this story.
Her son had used her credit card without telling her. She didn’t dispute the charge, but had to cancel her card. She apologized and said that his health was deteriorating, and his memory wasn’t the best at the moment. He asked her not to look at what I had made, because he wanted to surprise her with it, so I sealed them in an envelope. Then I had to spill the beans a little bit.
I told her that I had actually made two pieces, since I knew the one he had ordered was for her, and I felt strongly that his father, whom I had met while I was in the back seat of the car, should have one as well. She started to cry.
In the end, even though this custom piece went off the rails right from the start and continued to careen off the tracks throughout the process, it all turned out okay. And I still haven’t found that damned fingerprint card.
Work with the public, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.
