This is part 3 of the business coach transcript radio show. To read part 1 click here and to read part 2 click here.
All right thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrivetime business coach show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark and the former SBA entrepreneur of the year.
I’m the guy with Kim Jong-Un on the side of my Hummer. If you’re ever been behind me in traffic or next to me in traffic I’m sure you’ve extended your middle finger to me while waving and I am a business coach appreciate that. I know a lot of people are very critical of my driving and if I were you I would be too. So welcome back to the thrivetime show and we are very excited to be here with you. I’m very sorry. I cut you off in traffic a few times and today we’re talking about customer complaints and we’re talking about customer complaints. It’s kind of like me being a Hummer Steve you see a lot of times Steve I’m home in the Hummer right. And my wife’s in a Hummer with me this is it just happened yesterday. So we’re in the car my wife talks to me when my wife talks to me I have a 100 percent myopic focus this is my superpower this is my weakness I understand I’m self aware of this. My wife says hey babe what about such and such. And I turn my focus. I’m driving from the from the where the road to my wife. You’ve done that before Steve. Yes your Lamborghini. Do you get in OK. Yeah when you ride to your Lamborghini. So I turned to the right and I turned to the right. I noticed her and on the show I can break it down for you but at the time I don’t I don’t do it.
So as I turned to her my hand naturally sort of let go of the wheel or turns to the right just subtly and then as I’m turning my wife because we could just pay attention to that road and I turn back. And I’m focused on the road and then as she’s talking I no longer can hear what she’s saying because all I can hear is the road. Right. So then I want to die. I can’t do both. You know what I’m saying. And the thing is I’m not trying to generate a complaint but it’s a business coach learning opportunity and the learning opportunity is you know how do you prevent this situation from happening. You know in the future. And so typically for me it’s just turning on music and blocking out every form of human life in the vehicle and I’m able to drive safely but if I talk to humans it’s a repetitive problem. If you were in the car with me and you’d try to talk to me while driving you know it’s a repetitive problem and take Dr. Zoellner recently said we went to Chicago together and he gets out of the car. He says I will no longer ride with you in a vehicle.
Give me the wheel that’s all. So that happened to me. So similar thing where someone said they will no longer need a vehicle I don’t know maybe my wife.
So here’s the next step because I said What do you want except you’re going to have problems emotionally though Tim why do you want to accept that you’re going to have complaints occasionally. I mean let’s just say if you’re the best ever one per cent of your customers will be upset. Tim why do you have to emotionally accept you’re going to have some level of complaints.
Well because it’s just to be able to do the emotional management business management is emotional management. So if you know that this is a normal course of business you’re going to handle complaints here that that’s what comes from doing business. It’s not like your whole world gets robbed. It’s like you’re just going to do another day of business.
Hey Steve I want you to educate someone listening right now who says I want to accept what Tim just said it makes sense but it’s hard for me to embrace that I’ll ever have a complaint there’s somebody out there that I don’t want to market more I don’t want a guro I don’t want to deal with growth because of the complaints. And that person would be me okay so it’s essay because that’s always been my Achilles heel was scaling in any business because of with the d.j connection once I got the system tied I didn’t have complaints for like a couple of years in a row and I went yes yes yes. And that made me want to do everything myself. But at some point you have to let go to grow. What’s that balance Steve. Educate us.
Well I mean for me you call it the ceiling of complexity you get to the point where you can only do. We talked about this on a business coach radio show where you had the the phone cord running. Yeah you know because there was only so many people you could talk to in a day and at some point you got to let go of I can’t handle everything and accept the fact that other people are you and they’re not going to do it to the level that you’re going to do it and they’re going to mess up and then just put something in place to make sure that when that happens just like you said before that what has happened you recognize that it happens to you except it’s going to happen and then you determine how you’re going to respond like how you’re going to respond and how you going to learn from it because that’s what I do now thrive nation.
I want to give you some very specific steps of one every time you get a complaint. Use the last system endorsed by Chick-Fil-A. If you want to get more complex the guys at Yum Brands David Nowak the CEO of Yum Brands. Do you know this because this is what I do. He calls it blast to disbelieve the customer. Then listen then answer satisfied trust. You know I mean so. And then you could call it the Y blast which is you believe was an answer satisfied trust what the point is that’s what you do. But step number two though is you want to control how you’re going to respond to them. You want to control how you will respond to them which is the last system or a system you want to document. Make a process make a script for how you will deal with complaints. I want to say a confessional right now if it’s OK with Tim red but it’s ok I want to share a confessional about a job where I did not do the right thing and I had to be consulted and only the script was allowed the script as he always allowed me to stay gainfully employed. Are you are you ready for this. Let’s do this. My son I worked at work we’re a dark room. This is going to hurt. I worked at a company called Faith highway used to be called what was it called before impact impact predictions. And Tom Newman was my boss great guy. Shane Harwell I boss guy could do it.
So I’m on I’m working there in the call center and I’m still evangelism commercials the churches. And one thing you can’t do Steve is when you call a Church of Christ that’s a certain denomination. You cannot call and ask for the pastor because they don’t have a pastor they have a guy called the minister and apparently the nomenclature the syntax the semantics that matters more important than and they don’t allow praise and worship music. You can’t do praising work do you know why they can’t do praise and worship music at the Church of Christ. I mean you went to Oral Roberts University You obviously know everything about all religions all denominations of the Christian faith. Why can they not.
Well you know something happened I think in 1834 that I have no idea. OK.
So here’s the deal. To me I wasn’t a Christian until my son was you know like 1 years old basically. So I’m kind of you know nine years into that game. And so a pastor one time I called called. He is the pastor there they go oh actually he let me transfer you. So on the phone you know you were going pastor yada yada. And I say Pastor Riady out of this is Clark on on behalf of impact productions and I want to talk to you about evangelism commercial series we’re doing. He’s his son. We don’t have pastors at this church we have ministers of God. And I was an atheist at the time and so I decided I’d give him a piece of my own and I’ll edited edit what I said I’ll paraphrase So again I have the actual script but I said well you know then I would invite you to calm down. And he says what I said any you know any faith in religion I don’t believe in your religion. But if I did and you got upset about calling someone a pastor versus a minister it would make me not want to be a part of whatever your faith is. And so I’m not sure if you do believe in heaven hell but if you do believe in hell I don’t encourage you to go there.
And he’s like what. And I’m not. I mean if you do believe that I would encourage you to go I don’t. But if you did that’s where I would go if I were you and then there you could understand that no one cares whether you’re a pastor or a minister. You politely invited him to go to hell. That’s what I did. And I asked her. But I will admit it and I’ve always been kind of that witty business coach guy. So as he’s getting mad he’s like son did you just tell me to go and I said No I did I would. I invited you just to go. I don’t personally believe in it but I was usually invited way way. They pulled me into that glass box.
They have a glass box and basically if you’re getting yelled at you go into a glass box where everyone can see you getting yelled at and they inform me about the script and how you deal with complaints and that script set me free and I read that thing insincerely for years because I never wanted to say what the thing said. But over time I got more and more sincere but it kept things from getting epic. And if you’re listening right now and you have a fast food restaurant or any kind of business where you have a high traffic volume you must accept that complaints will happen. You must write a system for how your team will risk them.
We come back we’re talking more about customer complaints on the business coach Thrive time show on your radio and if you didn’t see the boys in concert the Newcastle Block concert in person you missed out. But I’m telling you what maybe you can see them next time they come to town when they come into town again Steve probably. Probably. Will be there. Right.
Want to keep reading this business coach transcript? Part 4 is right here