Episode 31: The Right Way to Handle Customer Accusations and Other Customer Issues

Episode 31: The Right Way to Handle Customer Accusations and Other Customer Issues

Brandon Condrey:
So by you covering the costs of whatever the thing was, what you basically bought there was not getting a negative review.

Brandon Schoen:
Just the way you respond to that guys is truly the taste you leave in their mouth and the review they leave. I mean, that's an amazing experience. Actually, if they say you stole my thing and we say, I'm going to listen to you, we're going to hear you out and see and investigate it and actually take the time to care. That's something most companies don't even do in the first place.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Ring, ring, ring.

Brandon Condrey:
Thank you for calling Sandia Green Clean. This is Brandon. How can I help?

Brandon Schoen:
Oh yeah, you guys, you were just cleaning my house and you stole my credit card and I know it's you.

Brandon Condrey:
I don't think we did that. Are you sure we did that?

Brandon Schoen:
Oh yeah. Well, I can see all these charges here. You charge zales.com and backcountry.com and Victoria's secret. Yeah, man. I know it was you.

Brandon Condrey:
So if that ever happens to you, we're going to tell you how to get around.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. How to deal with fraud, how to deal with it. When your customers say you stole my stuff, you broke my thing. We're going to deal with it and talk about it. In this episode today guys, we're going to talk about the steps to handle that and how you want to solve that problem to the best possible.

Brandon Condrey:
So just stay tuned.

Brandon Schoen:
Say tuned and keep it clean.

Brandon Schoen:
Welcome back guys to another episode of the Profit Cleaners. I am Brandon Schoen in the house.

Brandon Condrey:
Brandon Condrey as well.

Brandon Schoen:
Brandon Condrey in the house and we're here with another exciting episode guys, we're going to be talking about the top 1% of cleaning business owners, sharing their knowledge to share to you so you can grow your cleaning business to the next level. And one of those things you're inevitably going to come across is people accusing you of theft and breaking their things. And the biggest thing you can do is, well, the biggest other side of that is how you handle it. How do you handle that situation? And that's going to make all the difference in the world.

Brandon Condrey:
Kind of scary, but eventually it's going to happen. So we might as well just prep you for it.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And actually, probably the best way to start the show out is tell you about that same story that happened to us right when we started the cleaning business.

Brandon Condrey:
It was the first one. It was our very first time this happened.

Brandon Schoen:
First few months in business and we got that call. The one that you guys just saw. And it was like, we were like, what do we do?

Brandon Condrey:
You stole my credit card? I think it was actually all by text, but you stole my credit card. Yup. Oh my God, what happened? Tell me more. Well, they just cleaned and they just left and there's a bunch of charges @zales.com and JC penny. And it was blah, blah, blah. And so I was like, all right, well stay calm. Like I'll help you out. Right. And I'm also flabbergasts so this is like a dinnertime. I was trying to make dinner with my kids. Right. And then she sent back a response that said, I know this is 2019, or it was 2017. He goes, no, this is 2017. And it's all text messages now, but a phone call will be nice. And so, alright. Okay. So I called her like, listen, I'm really sorry. Don't worry. Like we're going to handle this, whatever the result is, we'll take care of it. Just let me dig into a little bit and I'll get back to you. Can you get me the following pieces of information? I wanted to know where it was used when it was used. Can you call those places and see if they were for pickup or delivery? Like if it was pickup, then maybe we could get some security camera footage, but it was all shipment and they not going to tell us where they shipped it. Okay. Fine. And then a little mistake I made, I think was, I was like, are you sure? Cause like they had the card, which was the crazy part. So we didn't take the card there. Three was, we photographed the card and then left with the numbers because it was like left out on the counter, sitting out. So somebody snapped a picture of it. That's okay. Fair enough. But the other thing that was happening at the time was target had gone through that huge data breach where they had malware installed in their POS system. So for a long period of time, every single card that was swiped at target was in this database that some hacker sold online. And so I was trying to make the case that it might be this and not us. And so how do you do it? What do you do when that happen?

Brandon Schoen:
In hindsight, the best case scenario is you always take full responsibility. It's your business. And even if it wasn't your fault or it wasn't you doing it, you don't think you did it, your employees, maybe they did. Maybe they didn't the customer's always. Right. Right. That's what it always comes back to. And I can tell you from the beginning, when we started this business, there was a lot of reviews. So we would look at the competitor's reviews and it was like, again, a glaring hole in customer service that other competition just doesn't do this guys. And you can stand out head and shoulders above the rest. If you just care a little bit and take the extra effort to basically approach the situation like this. Okay. So you're saying that we stole your card. We're not going to admit fault. We're not going to say yes, we did steal your card, but we're not going to also say we didn't do it. We're not going to say you did it. And it's your fault and blame them.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. And you do not want to be antagonistic.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. You don't want to be antagonistic.

Brandon Condrey:
So your gut reaction is going to be like, well, how do you know that your boyfriend didn't steal it? Or like, did you have a plumber in there? Maybe the plumber stole it. Like how do you know it's us? Well, you have to realize is that it probably took them a little bit of courage to like place that call in the first place. So they've already done some mental calculations that it's you. Right? So to accept responsibility is going to do a couple things. One they've already gotten the back of their brain and negative association with your cleaning company because they already think that you stole it. I am calling to report a theft that you did. Okay. I'm very sorry about that. Tell me more. You just need to listen to them sometimes. It's just about right on load on me. Tell me what happened. Listen. Okay. So like, all right, let me get some information. I'm going to get back to you. So the next step is you're going to address this with the cleaning team that was in there. Like, Hey guys, depending on the time of day, if it's at the end of the day, like tomorrow morning, we're going to sit down and talk about this and you basically just need to do like a little investigation here. So you're going to talk to each one of them separately. Make sure all the stories line up like an old school police documentary or something. Okay. Well happen. Did you go into this room? Did you see, so-and-so go into this room. Was anybody acting weird? Like sometimes if this actually, if it's going to happen, if it's a big thing, well, that's the worst thing because it's, everyone's going to watch you walk out with a big thing, but usually it's going to be small. Did you see someone taking a photograph of like someone's wallet? Okay. When did that happen? Tell us about it. We have a policy at Sandia Green Clean that if you see valuables, it was actually one that we put into place as a result of this. If you see valuables, take a picture of it and post it to the team chat. So that way every single person in there knows that, Hey, on the master bedroom nightstand, there's a wad of cash and a bunch of whatever. And then it would be monumentally stupid for someone to steal it after the fact that we just all acknowledged it was there. And then that also is a little bit of covering you. If the customer calls back to report it, you're like, well, look, we have this policy. So we know that like a 10:53 when they were in your house and they sent us this picture, that those belongings were there. And so of course they get, are you like, well, they took the picture and then stole it. And like, yeah, what got me? Why would they tell us that they were going to steal it? Like that doesn't make sense. So you talk to the teams, most likely what's going to happen is they're going to say, of course we didn't take anything, you know, like, right. Okay. So the next step is, I don't know, what is it? We're going to call up the customer and say, listen, we talked to the teams. They're adamant. They didn't take it. We stand by our teams a hundred percent, but we don't want you to be upset with us. So listen, we're going to cover the cost of replacing whatever the thing is. Cause we don't want you to think that we did this, but at the same time, we don't want you to be mad with us. Right. Sometimes if it's little small little thing, they'll be like, ah, don't worry about it. It's not that big of a deal. I just was mad. And you're like, okay, well you sure can I give you a discount? Kind of get your next clean free something. And oftentimes in those situations they've already just made up their mind. Like I, I had already overreacted yesterday and I had cooled down and you talk to me today and they were good. And then in some cases, you're like, we're going to cover the damage. And they're like, okay, great. But I don't want those people in my house ever again. Okay, fine. Well, I agree. We don't want you in there if you don't trust us, but we do stand by the employees a hundred percent. So by you covering the cost of whatever the thing was, what you basically bought there was not getting a negative review. Like they're not going to go leave a one-star review that says they stole my stuff and then paid for it. Like that's not going to happen. So that's insurance for you that, okay. We bought ourselves out of a sticky situation. We lost a customer, which is a bummer. And hopefully they're not going to go around telling people this, that, or the other thing, but just the right thing to do to avoid the negative association.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. And just the way you respond to that guys is truly the taste you leave in their mouth and the review of the leave. I mean, that's an amazing experience. Actually, if they say you stole my thing and we say, I'm going to listen to you, we're going to hear you out and see, investigate it and actually take the time to care. That's something most companies don't even do in the first place. And then inevitably what happens is usually they realize it was their own carelessness and they actually did leave it in the closet or it turns up a week later or their kid actually took it. And when they weren't looking, and that happens like really like a lot of the time, nine times out of 10, probably however, just the fact that they know that we've got their back and we do have a hundred percent guarantee, which we build into our marketing and that just gives them so much more trust. And so again, just put yourself in the scenario of the customer shoes, like what a better experience to think that somebody did something like that. Maybe this company stole it. Maybe they didn't, but you thought they did. And just the way that they handled it, they were so positive. They listened to you. They reassured you. It's going to be okay and they'll cover it. If that, I mean, what a better experience than no, we didn't take it. And it's your, and you gotta figure it out on your own. And on now you got to fire that company and like what a horrible experience. And now you do want to go leave that negative review versus we've totally flipped it on them. And we've gone over above and beyond even paid for it. And maybe they found it later and they're like, Oh my God, I found it. And they paid for it. Like now they're going to go leave that review, right? Yeah.

Brandon Schoen:
Hey guys, I wanted to take a quick break to let you know a little bit more about our course, the 10X toolkit we've put together so many amazing resources to help cleaning businesses like yours, learn how to get more recurring clients on the schedule. The systems we teach you in this course are the exact same systems we've used to grow our cleaning business to seven figures in just three years. In fact, in one year we were able to accomplish the growth that our mentor in Denver had in 10 years. So it's definitely a shortcut guys to success. Model after that success, everything from finding the perfect clients to learning how to keep your schedule filled, we cover everything you need to 10 extra business and without wasting your time and money to learn more about this incredible course, head over to Profitcleaners.com/courses that's Profitcleaners.com/courses.

Brandon Condrey:
I lost this thing I found at six months later, but they covered it anyway. They're so amazing. That's the best case scenario. And then they call you up to apologize and they're like, I want to give you my $500 back. Yeah. Great. Thanks. Very helpful.

Brandon Schoen:
And another story I always would tell people on estimates was actually our mentor Corby in Denver. He told us in the beginning, I don't know how many years into the business they were, but they were cleaning a house, their team. It was like a remodel. They were putting it. They just put brand new wood floors in the house, right? And the team was in there while I guess they were hooking up the refrigerator. Some plumbers or people were hooking up the refrigerator. They didn't tighten a gasket on the tube or something. And there was a leak coming out of the back of the team left. They finished cleaning this new remodeled house. The owners came home the next day. And the floors were flooded with like an inch of water on the brand new wood floor.

Brandon Condrey:
The wood all warped, what had actually happened was they called up and said, the teams moved the fridge and it broke this water line. And now all the wood flooring is ruined well, Corby known right away that they didn't do that because that's not part of the clean procedure is to pull out the fridge. We're not going to move a huge heavy appliance to clean behind it. We're just going to clean it where it is. So Corby knew right away that that wasn't a thing. But Corby also knew the flooring guy so that it was that the floors had been just reinstalled as part of a sale of a house. So the floors were trashed Corby called it, the flooring guy. He was a friend big Redis split it. So they split the cost because they couldn't put a finger at one or the other. And then that lady ended up being super happy because like they fixed the floors before the house sale closed and everything was cool.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And that's like kind of an extreme example, but it just shows you guys taking a hundred percent responsibility, no matter what the scenario is always going to go a long way because that word of mouth travels, and we've explained this over and over again, like a negative person, that's a megaphone like screaming. This company is the worst ever. You're going to have those people if you treat them that way. But if you also turn that situation around and you take that customer, that's really unhappy potentially into solve that problem for them, you replaced that item for them. Or you let know that you got their back, they're gonna turn around and become one of your biggest raving fans. And they're going to take that negativity that they're spewing out to the world. And they're going to turn that into a positive message. And now they're going to tell all their friends and neighbors the opposite story about your company because of what you did and how you handled it. And that's really where we're getting at is the smallest things to the biggest thing guys, it matters in that word of mouth. It builds. And that's ultimately your reputation for years and years.

Brandon Condrey:
I am going to give you a couple examples like the theft thing has happened precisely four times in three years and over thousands and thousands of clean very little. And it happened. So I'm going to give you some examples. So we've already got the credit card one at the beginning, we basically got, they canceled their credit card and the things were refunded because it was on a credit card. And we told them that it wasn't us and they agreed. And they're still customers now. So that's a way to just get over it. Yeah. The other one, we had a customer not even call us. They left a review that said you stole my stuff. And so obviously we jumped on that right away. That's the other thing is you don't want to delay with this. You need to move on it quick. Right. Prevent the situation from exploding. So we called her, Oh my gosh, what happened? Like tell me what happened. I moved in, it was a moving clean. I only used you once I had this ring, it was for my 25th wedding anniversary. And now it's gone. And I told this girl not to go into a bedroom. And she went and closed the door and she was in there for a long time. And I think she just pocketed it, like, okay, we're really sorry about that. So then we go back and reverse engineer, like what happened? But it turned out that we cleaned that house 63 days ago, 63 days. And so we still talk to the team. Hey, do you guys remember this house on this day in such a time? Like, no, we cleaned 300 houses since then. Right? Sorry. It's like, I mean, we responded publicly to review and we're going to have a whole episode, I think, in the future about how to respond to negative reviews. But yeah, in the end, like she's not going to press charges over this. We tried to pair for it. She said it has sentimental value. And so she just was really mad and wanted to be mad. And so we'll let her be mad. There was another one that was, but recently, and this one I do think was an example of theft committed by one of our employees, but there's no evidence, I suppose. So this was a customer that had been a recurring customer. Two pairs of headphones were missing from the house. After we came in that team, we were in a desperate staffing situation at the time. And so we had hired someone like the day before, like on the job training, let's go and to get out there, we need you. And she was younger. I think she was like 19 and the headphones had disappeared and then she quit the next day. And so in that case, I do think that she stole the headphones were small. They were like AirPods. She was able to put them in a pocket. And that really pissed me off. And again, in that situation, we didn't say like, yeah, I think we did it. We just told her like, well, I'm really sorry. I don't think that that happened. But in the interest of maintaining good faith, we're going to cover that. And we did. We just cut them a check for the headphones and they went and bought new headphones and they still stayed customers. So there are ways to overcome that. And then we've also had a couple of really big ones and this is why you need insurance. And this is a really good time to call your insurance rep and ask for the following things. Do you have missing item coverage? If so, up to how much cool what's the deductible. You need to know if they're going to cover it, somewhat policies don't cover it. So like if your customer calls up and says, Hey man, I just bought a quarter million dollar Rolex last week, and now it's gone. Your insurance isn't covering that unless you specifically have it on there. So you got to ask for that. And the other one is, do you cover issues related to the quality of the work? So you will make a mistake. You will break stuff. You will damage stuff. Usually that's easy. It's like we knocked over this vase. Here's a new vace and that's not a big deal, but we had a really bad one where the customer bought a whole new set of kitchen appliances, 10 grand worth of appliances. The lighting in the kitchen was really bad. One of our employees is in there wiping the front of the appliances with a microfiber. And then when the customer got home and turned on the lights, there were just these swirl marks scratches on everything. And so we had two assumptions. One, the team brought in an unauthorized piece of equipment, like a scouring pad. They swear they didn't do that. We looked at their equipment, it wasn't in there or two on the unlikely side of things, but still possible is that there was like a tiny little rock or something inside that got caught in the microfiber. And she just didn't see it because the lighting was bad. And so they just went through and just scratched them all. So that one is a quality of work claim on your insurance. We had to pay a thousand dollars for the deductible, but because the customer's stuff was brand new and they had the receipts from like, I think they were literally 10 days old. They got full reimbursement for the appliances because there was no depreciation in 10 days. And that's why you have insurance.

Brandon Schoen:
And I just want to say in that case, in point that story, we over-delivered, we went over above and beyond. We actually cared and we did whatever we could. We got insurance involved even to replace this customer's brand new appliances so much so that the customer was so happy that that customer actually works for us now.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah that's our sales guys, our sales guy. And so one of the reasons that he was excited of it though, is that okay? They cut me a check for my appliances. So they're free. And his wife was upset and originally they were going to replace the appliances. But what they ended up doing instead is they had two young kids and they said, screw it. We'll just deal with the scratched appliances. And since then, those kids have made it way worse, like crashing skateboards into like the bottom of the oven and stuff. And that's so like they just got free appliances via insurance and everybody's happy. The other one I want to talk about is a customer. Who'd been a customer for a long time, said that we stole this. She kept in her best her closet, this shoe box that had cash and jewelry and blah, blah, blah. And that's all missing. And so this lady was serious and she filed a police report and they're like, okay, we'll take it down. And what we ended up doing is we did file an insurance claim on the missing item stuff. And when that happens, they assign an adjuster, the adjuster is going to do their own investigation. They're going to talk to our employees, they're going to talk to the customer. And in the end they declined that claim because really it's like the burden of proof is on the customer to prove that we did it like with surveillance video, or I saw them walking out with my shoe there, the shoe box, like underneath their arm or something. But truth be told is that we had cleaned a month before. So she reported it a month after the fact. And because it was kind of like a valuables box, you're not going in there every day and peeking in there to see if the stuff is still there. So realistically she didn't know when the last time that they saw that. And so any number of people could have been in there. Maybe you have a family member that has an addiction issue or something. And that was unfortunate that they came in and like stole some stuff, but like these things happen. And so she wasn't pleased that they declined the claim, obviously. But look, we did our due diligence. So if she ends up leaving us a negative review, we'll put the response up. We're really sorry. We do not think the employees did it. They were very upset to know that they'd been accused of this. We didn't do the proper thing and filed the insurance claim and that them or the police found any cause that we did anything. And so like, that's a bummer because you're going to lose that customer for sure, because they're already convinced that you did it and the insurance disagrees. And so that's just a wash. And so the best hope for that is that they don't leave a review, but if they do stay tuned for the future episode and we'll teach you how to respond.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. That's a great segue into that. So we will have a future episode guys. We're actually going to go into all of our negative reviews and we're going to show you exactly our template and how we respond to those. And I think really to recap this guys, it's like what you say, isn't as important as how you say it, especially in these situations, you know, how you deal with these customers, how you handle the situation is so much more important than what you say. And, but of course, you've taken these things. We've said you don't want to accuse them or take fault. And you want to be just listening and as helpful as possible. Because nine times out of 10 guys, it's going to solve itself. They're going to find their missing card or their, whatever their missing item is. And they're just going to appreciate how well you've handled it, how well you said things instead of what you said, but how you said it and that you cared well.

Brandon Condrey:
And what you did. So like that brought up another memory from Corby. They had broken a lamp. It was a fancy stained lamp that the couple had gotten when they were on honeymoon in Venice, Italy. And there was just no way to get another one because they didn't know how to do it. So Corby actually hired a local stain glass artist and they recreated it based on pictures. And it costs like $2,000 to make this lamp by hand. But they were like over the moon that like, okay, it's not ours. It's not the sentimental one that was gone. But like, it's really cool that you did this. So it's not just that you said like, yeah, we'll cover the damage. It's like, what if I do the research and find you a stained glass person that can make the thing for you? Would that like be better? And they're like, you're going to do that. You're a cleaning company. Like I know we're the best cleaning company ever. That's why you should hire us.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And think about that story. As people are sitting around their dinner table or having beers with their friends, that story is going to resonate so much further and louder than this cleaning company came in and broke my stuff. No, instead this cleaning company came in and they possibly brought, but they replaced it all. And they went over the top to make sure they made it right. And like, that's the kind of story you want people talking about your business and that's, long-term reputation management that you're really building. And that's the big picture thinking.

Brandon Condrey:
All right guys, there's your dose of knowledge for the day on the cleaning side of things and stay tuned in the future for the negative review episode, if that's what you want to learn. But otherwise we got new content coming out every week on YouTube now. So if you're watching us on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell. That's right. If you're listening to us on one of your podcast tabs, to make sure you subscribe and leave a review, those are always very helpful.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. If you guys are getting a new perspective, a mindset shift or helping you at all, like increase your business in any way possible, please help us in return and reciprocate that the reviews go a long way. And obviously the subscribing helps us because we're not running ads and annoying you guys. So pay it back.

Brandon Condrey:
Hit us up on Profitcleaners.com. There's lots of good info out there and we've got courses coming out soon. So stay tuned there and until then, keep it going.

Brandon Schoen:
Keep it clean.

Announcer:
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