Tips on How to Completely Ruin Your Customer Satisfaction

We all know how difficult it is to work in customer service.

You should always be smiling, actively listening, and ready to problem solve. Even when a customer vents on you because Jim from the warehouse has sent them the wrong model of a toothbrush.

One of my first “adult jobs” was working in a call center. I had a really hard time, especially that for every nine polite customers, there was that one that really got under my skin. I dreamt about one peaceful day when, instead of being professional, I could just speak what’s on my mind and get my revenge on rude customers.

Let’s go on a quick customer journey and try to do everything we can to earn this one peaceful day. But let’s not focus on customer service only, let’s make the whole experience a nightmare. The revenge is sweet.

Here are three tips on how to completely ruin your customer satisfaction!

1. Browsing your website

The first mistake you can make is creating an intuitive website that customers love to visit.

Do we really want our customer to make a quick purchase and disappear? Of course not. On the contrary, it would be nice if they sink into your website looking for product descriptions, pictures, shipping information, and contact info.

Forget about clear website architecture and navigation. In the ideal world, customers shouldn’t make more than three clicks to reach the desired page, but it’s not the case. The more clicks your website visitor has to do, the more frustrated they will be.

Let’s add some spice to customer experience.

Did you know that mobile purchases account for 19 percent of 2017 U.S. online sales? And that number is predicted to reach 27 percent by the end of this year? I guess it’s time to also forget about mobile friendliness. Make sure that it takes ages to open your website on mobile!

2. Informational chaos

While the technical side of your business is important, content is very important too. There are a couple of copywriting rules that a good marketer can’t break for the sake of amazing customer experience. Luckily, this time, we can let our imagination run wild. Let’s break those rules to pieces:

Jargon

How many times have you heard not to use jargon in your texts? Forget about it, the more complicated words, the wiser you sound. Say goodbye to simple language and hello to convoluted nomenclature.

Product information

When you run an online store, one could think that solid product descriptions are a necessity. Well, it depends on what you want to achieve. If you don’t want your customers to be happy with their shopping experience, I recommend placing low-resolution pictures and brief, sales-like descriptions.

Hide the shopping details

Is there anything more fun than looking for sizing table and being not able to find it? Or finding hidden fees in the shopping cart? What are you waiting for, hide it! Don’t forget about one of my personal favorites: inadequately high shipping costs!

Pro tip: People, annoyed with your website, might want to check if they can trust your company. They might be looking for the “About” or “Company info” pages. Unpublish these pages and gain sweet anonymity!

3. Customer service

Here comes the crème de la crème of customer experience. The heart of every business and its front-line.

If we’re lucky, 100 percent of your website visitors are already impossibly annoyed and seeking for contact with your agents. There are a couple of strategies you can do to turn up their anger:

Hide your contact info

There’s nothing better than lack of contact with customer service teams! Unfortunately, if you remove your contact info from your website, you won’t be able to enjoy conversations with angry customers.

Give customers your email only

I think that email is the worst of all forms of customer service contact. Sure, it has its pros, but not necessarily when a customer wants to make a purchase right here, right now. That’s why in terms of ruining customer satisfaction, emailing is perfect.

In fact, you don’t really have to do anything. Just focus on not replying to emails too soon. The most important rule is not to respond before 24 hours have passed! Also, from time to time, choose a lucky customer who won’t receive a response from you at all.

Live chat

If you have live chat on your website, you’re in trouble. For customers, it means that you’re eager to help them anytime they need you. That’s not good. It might create a false impression that you are there for them and not the other way around.

Don’t despair, though, there’s still a way to fix it.

Live chat is meant to be the fastest way to help your customers. If you want to ruin your customer satisfaction, start from ruining your response time. There’s nothing more frustrating than asking something on live chat and waiting for ages (minutes, in fact) for a response.

You can also gamify your chats a bit. Play the hot potato game and transfer the customer between agents without saying anything. Another brilliant idea is to stop accepting chats and leave an offline form asking to email you. Pure evil!

Choose your strategy

Ruining your customer happiness has its pros and cons.

Pros:

• A lot of people will learn about your company. It’s just like Comcast: the worst its support is, the more people get familiar with its brand.
• You will have a lot of free time, because eventually people will avoid your website.

However, this strategy has also its cons.

Cons:

• The problem is, customer satisfaction translates into customer loyalty and, eventually, into higher revenue. On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. Also, it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one!

So, if you want, you can use my tips, have fun in your work and scare off your customers. But if you aim to grow your company, you should probably take my tips with a pinch of salt.

This way or another, I’m wishing you creating a memorable customer experience.

Learn how employee satisfaction can directly impact customer satisfaction.