281: Handling Post Purchase Mistakes

Even the best laid plans go astray.  The sale has been completed, the funds have been paid and we get busy in our sales job moving on to help other clients.  Another department may be tasked with handling the next steps with the client.  It doesn’t matter who is doing the delivery of the solution, because if something goes wrong, the buyer expects us to fix it and to take accountability.  In Japan we are their tanto, the designated person to handle this account and there are strong expectations about how we play that role.  Being busy with other clients is of no interest to this client, because they expect us to be at their beck and call 24 by 7.  If there has been some problems, minor or catastrophic, we have to get busy fixing them.  So what should we do?  Here are seven steps to handling post purchase problems for the buyer.

We have to shut down all the noise going on in our brain and just concentrate on listening to them, when they tell us what they are unhappy about. Don’t react, argue, justify or cut the buyer off when they are talking. Just shut up and listen to what they are telling us, watch their body language and think about what they are not telling us.

Don’t try and escape responsibility.  Nothing annoys buyers more than when sellers try to avoid responsibility by shifting the blame to someone else.  The buyer doesn’t care about that.  As far as they are concerned “you are the firm”.

Expect that the buyer can become quite emotional and upset. We can never know what is going on in the buyer’s firm.  We may have done something which is burning their precious clients.  We can’t be sure of what financial and political pressures they are under, how safe is their job, what grief they are getting from their boss, what is driving their emotional reaction.  What we can do is stay calm in the full frontal gale of invective that is coming our way.

We should try and clarify exactly what is the problem?  They may be spitting out every problem under the sun, but there will be some higher echelon issues which need to be worked on immediately and we need to know what they are, rather than trying to sift through every problem they are raising with us. We need to set this up, otherwise it may come across the wrong way.  We say, “Thank you, just so I can make sure of what I need to do to fix this for you, can I just clarify the precise most immediate issue you are facing, to make sure I fully understand it?”.  This may not be greeted with joy when they hear it, but stay calm and don’t say a word until they give you the answer.

After they have told you their hierarchy of issues, express your empathy for their problem. 

We are not agreeing or disagreeing with them at this point, but we are recognising how frustrating this is for them.  They want to know we understand the ramifications of our errors and mistakes for their business. We need to assure them that we have a clear picture of the problem in its entirety. This cushion is just one sentence, as it is a bridge to our answer about what we are going to do.  We have to be careful that we don’t jump in and start speaking before we are fully engaging our brain about what is the best reply, given the situation.  The cushion buys us valuable thinking time.

Make a point of telling them that you are taking personal responsibility to fix this.  They expect that, but it is good to state that you understand you are 100% accountable for the next steps. Do everything you can to resolve the issue.  This may mean having to get the cooperation of other divisions, it may upset other people internally, it may mean you going to your boss to get help.  Regardless of all of that, do whatever it takes fix it.  Remember we are always thinking of the lifetime value of the buyer. You assure the buyer again and again, that you will make sure it gets fixed for them, as fast as possible.

After the issue has been fixed, you check in again to see if they are happy with your response. We may think we have done a sterling job, but what we think doesn’t matter because the buyer is the final arbiter of a successful solution, not us.

You ask if there are any remaining problems or any remaining issues which need further work from your side? There also may have been hidden areas of unhappiness that still have not been directly addressed and we need to flush them out, so that we can deal with them.

If the solution takes some time, we must keep in contact with the buyer and give them frequent updates on progress.  After a little time has passed, we reach out to the client to check if the previous resolution had proven satisfactory or not and see if there are any residual problems.  This demonstrates our sincerity and customer care and because we are aiming for a lifetime partnership between our firms this is a key step to make sure that becomes a reality.

Western CFOs do a mathematical calculation and work out that the most profitable way forward is to live with a defect rate of a certain percentage and just fix the problems when they arise.  No Japanese buyer is going to put up with that, because they are operating on the basis of zero defects.  The attitudes towards mistakes are a universe apart, so when problems do come up, we have to be ready to fix them in a way which satisfies the buyer because our brand is at risk here. In Japan having a bad reputation for quality control is the last thing you want.