Sandwich Compliments For Better Service

Getting good customer service can sometimes feel like a crapshoot, but weblog Consumerism Commentary offers a few suggestions for improving your experience, including “sandwiching” your criticism between two positive statements.

Image: Emily Hildebrand.

Most of their suggestions we’ve covered in our step-by-step guide to getting better customer service, but they add a clever way to keep the conversation positive and make reps more likely to hear you out:

Offer a “complaint sandwich”. This is a psychological manipulation tactic — and it works. If you start your discussion with a positive comment, move to a discussion of the issue you’d like to resolve and end again with a positive comment, you’re more likely to receive the results you want. In my experience, this strategy is called praise-suggestion-praise.

You could start a discussion by saying how much you love being a customer of the company. It’s important to be sincere and genuine and to quickly get to the core of the matter so you don’t waste the representative’s time. After explaining your issue, offer praise again, thanking the representative and remaining positive that the two parties can agree about a resolution.

It isn’t a guarantee, of course, but it’s certainly easy enough that it’s worth a shot. We’ve mentioned a similar technique before when giving constructive criticism to your co-workers, but it’s a good tip for customer service-specific situations. Hit the link to read more.

How to Receive Great Customer Service [Consumerism Commentary via Wise Bread]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


4 responses to “Sandwich Compliments For Better Service”

Leave a Reply