Some incredible people we call our customers.

The Customers – As a business owner or put more simply, someone who is on the other side of the coin of that of the customer, you soon come to realise that the saying ‘The customer is always right’ is just not true.

Back in the old days, in another, more gentile time when an agreement sealed with a handshake was seen as binding, you would suffer a brutal fall from social grace if you went back on your word.

Customers. Back in the old days, in another, more gentile time

These days it seems every interaction between a business and customer comes with risk. It is commonplace for the customer to show distrust and for the business to reassure and to have to over prove their abilities and loyalty to fulfilling the customer’s needs. 

The Customers Are Always Right!?!

This loyalty to fulfilling the customer’s needs, being that it becomes the pattern of obedience that it does, and is the same throughout the business world, often goes against yours and that of your employee’s gut feelings. Undoubtedly there are going to be those times where you drop the ball. Mistakes happen and it is up to us to make right on the deal. I don’t do it so that my Google ratings remain high, but because my business is driven with pride and respect. Pride and respect for my customers, for my business and those within it, for my industry and for my word, which when given, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I take very seriously.

Hmmmm Is ‘very’ a strong enough word? 

The best years of my life as a child were spent living with my grandparents. In their own way they were quite Victorian. Beautiful people, strict people, hard people, proud people, who amongst a million other things, taught me the word ‘decorum’, what it meant and how conducting oneself properly, at all times, was just good manners and the right thing to do, the respectful thing to do. Within the folds of practicing “good form”, comes honesty, sincerity and a certain confidence, it simply cannot be helped, don’t you know!

Hindsight Rated - Customer Care
Grandparents

For reasons that I shan’t go into here, people seem to have lost the want and need to show good social behaviour, propriety, and any conviction is soon forgotten with the slightest discomfort.

More and more often that discomfort comes from a lack of knowing, or a fear of knowing too little to be able to trust a decision or a string of decisions. The problem, for me, comes when this distrust is mixed with the lack of decorum and the ability “to own” someone with a simple anonymous click of a mouse or stroke of a thumb. We have companies of all sizes, caught in a Krav Maga style embrace and anything, no matter if it wasn’t remotely true, can be used as a pressure point to control the situation and gain an upper hand.

A lady moved from the Carolinas to Florida, into a 90-year-old house without seeing the area or the home in person. The house was in terrible condition and hadn’t been lived in for over two years. An electrical contractor was asked to add three dedicated circuits, which they did. After six weeks and still an open invoice, the office called the lady to ask why she hadn’t yet paid for the work. She said, ‘since their visit, her attic space was getting hot.’ July in Florida will do that, was the response. From there she promised a scathing review and to get the authorities involved if the invoice wasn’t reduced by half. By half. By bloody half. 

What would you have done?

The practice of this kind of customer, up until recently, has been shrugged off as simply a part of what we do, something to put with and something not to be spoken about, and although some companies such as Airbnb and Uber have developed an internal rating system and use it extensively, it is not something that is accessible to the masses.

Behaviour has gotten so bad that even customers on airlines who don’t receive their drink in a timely manner are causing planes to reroute to closer airports so that the passenger can be evicted from the craft after beating up air stewards or going as far as storming the cockpit.

This practice of taking advantage hurts not only the business but the customer in turn, the business will approach every customer at arm’s length. 

I feel very strongly about this matter. So strongly in fact, that I quit the game that I had been in for over twenty years and decided to put all of my efforts into coming up with a solution to the problem.

That solution is Hindsight Rated and the Community within it.

A New Era In Customer Relation Management - LinkedIn
‘Hindsight’ because it is 20/20 and ‘Rated’, well you get it….

Picture this:

You take a call from a customer (a stranger) who wants your product or service.

Open the Hindsight Rated app:

Input the address and name of the customer, Business or Residential into a database….

….And just like that you are able to perform a background check!

Is this customer good to work with?

Is there a Lien against the property which is too recent to have appeared on the governmental websites?

Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers, Customers,

Is this customer amazing, and I can let down my guard & deliver the service as I always want to?

You actually have the ability to consider who should be your customer, and you can do it within seconds!

Hindsight Rated Home Screen
The Hindsight Rated Home Screen
  • The database searches for that customer, and if registered within the system, allows you to see any ratings and comment history for that customer from other businesses.
Hindsight Rated Rating History Screen
From this page you can also access any comments left from other businesses as well as a time line of services performed.
  • Navigate to the address of the customer.
  • Create a quotation or an invoice.
  • Rate the customer and your interaction and share this rating with the customer through a bespoke email directly to their inbox. 
  • Now you are able to make a more informed decision on how or indeed if you work with them.

Now you can rate your customers back. 

What Is Hindsight Rated, Customer Reviews
Bespoke email sent to your customers – See those links at the bottom? They are your links, to your preferred business rating and social pages…

A rated customer can be held accountable for their actions. A good customer can benefit because now businesses can more easily differentiate and apply their trade with a greater air of confidence, and as such provide a better quality of service.

Rating your customer generates a reciprocal response and your business receives more ratings. It also builds a better customer base, especially with those who are rated favourably. And it generates a greater “word of mouth” response, who doesn’t like to be liked?

The way I see it, we need a gentle way of bringing a little consequence to the equation. We need a positive solution to negate the abuser who were told we must suffer in silence.

Nothing, even Hindsight Rated is fool proof when it comes to people, human nature and your customers, but a little knowledge and some accountability goes a very long way!

Consumer information is used every second of everyday, often this information is out of the reach of the average small business and of very little real world use….. Since an estimated 99.9% of all business is small business, we feel this should change.

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