“I have great news! Your order is ahead of schedule and you will see it 2 days early!”
Who doesn’t love giving good news to a customer? It is such an easy phone call to make.
But what about when their order is 4 days behind schedule, potentially lost, their customer is screaming at them across their desk, and they won’t see it until after the weekend? I don’t see anyone jumping at the chance to break that kind of news.
Delivering unfavorable information is one of the toughest yet most important things that anyone is customer service has to do. The result of that exchange will determine whether or not a customer calls you back for future orders. The trick is to be honest and do your absolute best to resolve the crisis. If you are dishonest, things can really backfire. I’d like to illustrate this for you through an experience that I had recently with a freight company. In this story, I was the customer – the unhappy, extremely angry customer.
We’ll jump right to the juicy part…
I had just received a phone call from my customer, Marco, letting me know that their unit had not yet arrived. Needless to say, he was a bit frustrated and was looking for a quick solution to his problem.
WEDNESDAY: I called the carrier to get some answers. After being transferred around to three different people, I finally was able to get a status update. The truck had broken down and the unit was sitting in the wrong city… already 1 day late. The carrier did assure me, though that the delivery would arrive by lunch time tomorrow. I thanked them for their help and gave Marco a call.
THURSDAY: Still no delivery at 12:00pm. Marco was on the phone, screaming into my ear about how livid his customer would be, quite the contrast from the friendly conversations we normally had. It was time to call the carrier again and I wanted accurate information. This time, I was told that the driver arrived late to work and that the truck left almost 2 hours behind schedule. I was promised that my customer would see their unit by 5:00pm, so I prepped myself to deliver the news.
Marco accepted the information with a chuckle. “My customer will be just fine as long as I have this before the end of the day today. No worries.”
FRIDAY: 11:00AM – Not a delivery truck in sight. This time, I was monitoring the status online and without even speaking to Marco, I knew he didn’t have his unit. After feverishly jamming the 1-800 number into my phone I heard, “XXXXX Carriers, my name is Michael, how can I help you?” My knee jerk reaction was to absolutely erupt on Michael. Instead, I gave him my tracking number and asked for a status update.
“Oh, it looks like this unit has been lost for almost 3 days. Didn’t anyone call you? We have been working on recovering the shipment but the earliest I can get this to your customer would be Monday morning. You should have been informed of this on Wednesday when you called.”
Saying I was shocked at this point would be putting it mildly. All I could think about was how I could possibly deliver this update to Marco without seriously damaging our relationship.
I picked up the phone, and gave Marco the bad news…
After I had walked him through exactly what had happened, heard his frustrations, and offered anything and everything to make the situation better, he ended our conversation with a statement that I’ll now think about each time I have negative news to deliver:

So what’s the lesson? Have enough respect for your customer to give them the facts. No matter how bad the situation seems, you can’t go wrong by telling the truth and setting accurate expectations. When you start making promises you can’t keep, you risk losing a customer for good. Instead, use honesty and accuracy to be a resource; even when their orders or overall experience takes a turn, this can keep them coming back.

Last week, “Hopeless Remantic” Anthony Stanley shared what life on the sales hamster wheel is like…from the point of view of the hamster. This week, he writes about delivering bad news to customers, one of the toughest & most important things anyone in customer service experiences. Like what Anthony has to say? Want to get into a friendly sales debate? Leave him a comment below or email him directly.