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About all those ticket price whiners ...
An (ALL CAPS) Angry Pants Event Email ...

Before responding to complaints about your event, do this ...

or some reason, online customer service has been a hot topic this week. Whatever the cause, clients seem to be dealing with a higher rate of online complaints than usual. Strangely enough, their events aren't until the fall.

So, instead of complaining myself, let me give you the first step in dealing with any complaint. It's the first thing you should do if someone writes you a criticism via email or posts something nasty on social media.

But before I get into the recommendation, allow me to ask the following:

Do you have a policy or procedure in place for dealing with complaints about your event? How do you or your team deal with people who complain? Do you log all your complaints?

Hopefully, you have a procedure in place. Even if you do or don't have a process, here's a recommended first step ...

If someone writes you an email or posts something to social media, before taking any action (or getting upset), do this ... check and see if they're a customer or previous customer. Doing so will at least give you a general idea of how to deal with the complaint.

If the person is a customer. You might want to dig a little deeper into their customer file. If you're not sure, you might want to ask them.

Why does it matter?

Because if they are a previous or current customer, that should impact how you handle their complaint. Personally, my goal is to turn every customer complaint into a win. And it works most of the time.

If they're not a customer, depending on their complaint, you might want to ask yourself, "do I really want this person as a customer?"

This is in no way to imply that you should treat anyone poorly or unprofessionally. But do you really want people who get all nasty with their complaints as a customer?

Ironically enough, I fired an Event Profit Report subscriber on Sunday. I tried to promptly address their concern, and they still went all unprofessional on me. Not someone I want as a customer! We all have our own limits, you need to decide what's right for you and your organization.

Remember - don't respond to them, don't get upset, do nothing ... until you see if they're a current or previous customer.

Want to get more info on event customer service? Check out the articles below:

Posted at 07:37 in Event Promotion and Marketing |

Tags: event customer service, marketing, promotion