Handling most types of online customers is never easy. Online customer care is always trying to balance quick response with accuracy. This becomes even more challenging when you have to deal with people of different temperaments. In this post, we serve you six types of online customers and brilliant ways to deal with them.
The Confused Online Customers
You post about a discount holiday in Kenya, but they are asking about how much it costs to travel to Kathmandu, a trip you don’t even offer. 😭
How to deal:
Politely restate that you only have a discount trip to Kenya on offer and if an offer to Kathmandu ever comes up, you will contact them.
Internet Trolls
Each time their handle pops up on your feed, you know they are there to complain about one thing or the other. Or to pick on something you said or didn’t say in your post and just be a nuisance. 🙄
How to deal: Take a deep breath, actually read what they have to say and try to be nice.
Note: If you are already having a bad day, it’s best not to respond to trolls until you are calm. You can read more on how to handle trolls the right way here.
The Irate Online Customers
Well, the name says it all. The irate online customers are angry and can be easily triggered by your response. Your first reaction may be to just run and hide. 🙈
How to deal: Make an honest assessment of the vexing issue, and then give a mild response tempered with a genuine/polite “please” and “sorry”.
The Know-It-All Customers
They come with solutions you know can’t work but they speak authoritatively about it and will even throw in how their sister worked with a company that did this and it worked, meanwhile, they are unwilling to try your solution. 😡
How to deal: Warn them that using their solution would void whatever warranty they have on the product and then calmly repeat your solution and ask them to follow the steps closely.
The Shapeshifting Customers
The thing with shapeshifting online customers is that you don’t see them coming. They present a simple case and before you know it, you are drawn into a battle that might end with you receiving a query from your supervisor 😔
How to deal: Don’t see any message as routine. Think deeply and critically before you respond to “innocuous” comments. It might be a trap to get you to do or say something you’ll regret.
The Five Star Customers
These are positive, nice, “love and light” people. You feel like you can conquer the world after interacting with this set of online customers. They are polite, straightforward, and mostly get their issues resolved 😃
How to deal: With this type of online customers, just do your job…they’re good peoples 🙂
If you enjoyed reading this and would like to find out more about working with customers online, read our article on online reputation management