The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast How To Turn Unhappy Customers Into Happy, Long Term Customers

Episode Date: July 10, 2019

How To Turn Unhappy Customers Into Happy, Long Term Customers

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, come in here with another great podcast. I certainly appreciate you folks for tuning in. Be sure to follow me on social media on pretty much all channels. You can find me at Chris Voss, no spaces, C-H-R-S-V-O-S-S. And if you guys have questions or input for the show or things that you want to contribute, ideas that you have, things that you'd like me to talk about, let me know.

Reach out to me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Twitter's a great place to reach me, of course. Follow me in all those areas. And say, Chris, I'd like to know more about this. Can you help me out with this idea? Whatever. If you're an entrepreneur, maybe struggling with some things, you want some advice, I do a lot of consulting for that privately, but also maybe if you just want maybe some open advice on the show,

I'd certainly love to share that with you because we like to make entrepreneurs successful. So a rising tide lifts all boats. So it's always going to help other people. I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 18, so I might have learned a few things. I'm not really sure. I'm still learning new things, too, so there's that. That or I'm just relearning lessons that I forgot that I should have remembered, and painfully I'm learning them again.

I don't know. Sometimes you have to go back and just make sure those things still don't work. I don't know if anyone ever intends to do that. I will tell you a quick funny story, I guess, if I can do that. I once had a CEO that I worked with for a time. And I was what we called an entrepreneur. And he sent me out to do some stuff that was kind of a pain in the butt. And I remember thinking, I really don't want to do this, but this is what he does. He sends me on

these missions into the jungle and my job is to go see if I can make it fly or profitable or work or make it revenue based. And so he asked me to do something and I went out to do it and it failed miserably. It did not work no matter all the different variations of testing and formulas I could, combinations I could do, could not make it work. So I came back to him and I said to him, I just can't make it work. And he said, I'll never forget, he said to me, he goes, he goes up. Well, still doesn't work then. Okay. Well, just want to check. And I was like, what? You tried this before and it failed. And you sent me on a, you sent me on a suicide mission. And he's like, yeah, we tried it a few years ago and

it didn't work. But, um, you know, you're pretty talented. We want to see if you could maybe pull it off or maybe, you know, some dynamics for the marketplace had changed over the last few years and, you know, maybe it would suddenly start working again. And that's, that's what happens in business. So, um, sometimes it's always good. Sometimes it's always good to check if things still fail. Uh, usually you might want to try that in small pockets of your business and little experimentation tubes that won't cost you 5 million bucks. And I'm not sure you want to try it in your personal life, but I don't know. I know some people that they,

you know, what's the online. If you keep doing the, the, the definition of insanity is they keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting, um, better results or something and not getting them.

So anyway, um, what I want to talk to you guys today is dealing with clients and how to turn different no's into yes's. So let's get into some of that and see where this goes. We're just going to do a one-on-one today with no guess. So recently I had a big show I was going to do here uh at infocomm 2019 and uh right before the show i'd flown in i'd done a 24 hour in and out from awe 2019 a big vr air show and i came down

sick with uh walking pneumonia i don't know was it the plane or uh just having you know being up for 24 hours doing a red eye in and out. Uh, I don't know. Uh, but, uh, you know, I, I pick up a lot of sickness on planes and I need to start wearing a mask on planes. In fact, the, the, uh, doctor on demand app gal, who was my doctor that I called into to get my medication, uh, for the walking pneumonia and get diagnosed. Uh, she's, she told me she wears those medical masks when she travels. And I'm like, well, if it's good enough for a doctor, it's good enough for me. I'm going to walk around. In fact, I'm just going to probably put like one of those diver head masks on me

when I fly from here on out. Or I'm thinking maybe one of those hazmat suits. That's how I'm going to start boarding planes from here on out. I'm so, I always get sick whenever I do, whenever I travel on planes, I just hate it. Um, so anyway, uh, so, so let's talk about some of the things. So we, we wanted to do an event and we were going to do some promotions at the event and do different things that we do at events. And, uh, we had several clients that had paid for us to be at the event to promote them and do work for them.

And unfortunately, I took it right up until the day I was trying to get better. I was taking my whatever the hell that pack is that they give you, my Z-Pack, and I had about a four-day run. So I was hoping by the fourth or fifth day, I'd be good to fly. And I was just still too sick by the night before the show. And I knew I couldn't board a plane. I'd probably end up in a hospital in Florida at Infocomm. And so here's kind of a way to turn around different issues you have with clients and things like that. How to turn no's into yes's.

How to make things work. And how to have better relationships with your clients. And this is a great story. I think you'll like this story. It comes out really good, and I'm not going to name any clients to it, but they've certainly come out really well with it. So the one thing I always like to do is give my clients extra. I always try and give my clients extra. If I say I'm going to do this for you, I'm probably going to do a little bit more, and then I'm going to make a point of telling you that I did a little bit more. We did more for you here.

We did some extra work for you here. But I always make a point of telling that because otherwise they expect it all the time. And it's always nice to tell people that you gave them something extra. And they need to understand that it's extra. And that it's kind of the kindness and beneficial, um, nature of your heart and your business and what you do because you care about your clients. You want to see your clients succeed because if you don't,

I don't know why you're working for them. Your job is to help them succeed. So, um, we had to call everybody who was booked for the show and say, look, Chris Voss is sick as a dog, but here's what we're going to do. So we had a, um, we, we, we kind of had a, an agreement of doing a certain amount of services and things like that for them. And I said, here's what we're going to do. I'm not going to be on the ground, but we're going to do something very different. We're going to have you guys call in and we're going to give you guys much more time than you would if I did what we normally do.

And we're going to provide a sponsorship level delivery of our services for you. So you're going to get what we would be charging two or three times more to a full-on sponsor in services from what we're going to do from our end. We're going to give you a much better interview than we would if we were on the floor. We'll even follow those up with additional podcast time so that you can come on the podcast and talk about your stuff. We're just going to give, give, give, give, give. So in the end, every one of our clients was really cool. Everyone was really understanding. There was one client who was like, you know, we really don't want to do this. We're really not sure about it. You know, we had agreement, blah, blah, blah, everything else.

So we sat down with them and said, look, here's, we're going to give you so much more than you can ever get before. And this is going to be awesome for you. And they were considering pulling out. And fortunately, we talked to them. We offered them all sorts of goodies. And to me, that just comes into the relationship of client. Uh, we've had clients for, well, I think in, I think in August we become 10 years old, the Chris Voss show. Um, and I think technically my social, whatever started in 2008. So I think we're already at the 10 year mark, but the official launch of the Christmas show was sometime in August, uh, 10 years ago. So, um,

we signed on them and said, look, we're, we're going to give you all this extra stuff. We're going to give you additional stuff after the show where you can come on and, uh, we're just going to pile on gifts to make them happy. And the one thing you have to realize when you're dealing with clients or when you're with people, you want to focus on the long-term. Me, I want people to be happy. I want people to be long-term clients. It's easy to get focused on just like that event or that deal or that contract or whatever the case may be. Maybe you're just doing one single thing for them or maybe a month's work or two months work or a year's work. But to me, having clients, customers, and people that you work with is awesome if you can get them to work with you

for a long time. My courier company that we owned years and years ago, we had some of the same original clients 13 years later when I closed that business and moved to Las Vegas and probably still would today if I hadn't closed that business and moved to Las Vegas. And probably still would today if I hadn't closed the business, but I really wanted out of Utah and moved to Vegas. Same thing with some of the other mortgage businesses that we had and other companies that we've owned over the years. We just had tons of repeat business. We had the customers keep coming back. Even with the Chris Voss show, I mean, we've had relationships with AT&T, Canon, Acer, Logitech. I could go on and on about all the people that you've, if you go back, you can still see the original videos in 2010 and 2011 on the Chris Voss show YouTube channel. And what's funny is that those videos are still being watched.

So we took this one client and we said, look, we're going to give you all this stuff. We're going to make sure that you're happy. You're going to be happy. They were kind of on the fence because they're like, you know, we're changing it. I'm like, but you don't understand. We're going to give you so much more. And so that we delivered on that and we delivered the reports that we were going through the process. We gave them, uh, really, they just went from like a basic sort of event thing that we do to a full-on sponsorship that I would charge four or five times more for it. Because in my mind, it was more important to make them happy for that moment. And yeah, I might have to burn some revenue. Yeah. I might have to do some extra

work that I, I, you know, it'd be very easy for me just to say, oh man, well, just screw this client, burn them and, and, uh, uh, you know, give them their money back and say, screw you. And they'll say, screw me and whatever. Um, but the, it was better to figure out a way for us to work amicably together to resolve the issue of me being sick and not being there and give them so much more value that they become happy. So the interesting thing about this whole process was we did that. We went through the show and we just gave so much. We gave so much extra love, attention, work, process, extra promotion that we would normally do for any sponsorship level, stuff that I would charge a lot more for. And for me, that's just what you want to do for a client because if you want to have them back

ever again, you can't burn them. You can't just go, well, screw you, take your money and get out of here and let's never talk again and we'll hate each other from here on out. It's a horrible way to do business. And the value prospect for both them and us by continuing to work together in the future is immense. So keep, you know, keep an eye on that big vision is really important.

So what we did is we, we took and fulfilled what we promised to do and we went over and above and trying to make them as happy as we possibly could. Here's the funny part about that whole experience out of it. Uh, they got some of the best results on the promotion that we gave them out of all the other four that were happy. Now, I don't know why it worked out that way. I don't know, you know, what sort of karma or whatever stuff in the universe, but what my client didn't realize was, is somehow their content is more popular in my feed and my audience than the other people who showed up. Now they, the other people got their value. That was great for them. But my client who

wanted to pull out, they got three to four times, if not more than that, the amount of traction and impression rates and promotion than our clients who just said, yeah, it's okay. You're sick. We'll roll with it. And you know what? They got extra too. So they were happy. Everybody got the same amount of extra, but what's funny was it ended up being just even better for the person who wanted to pull out. And I bring this story up because it's really important and the serendipity of it, of making, you know, going the extra mile and burning the labor, burning the cost and just say, you know what, I'm just going to eat whatever this extra is going to cost. Most of it's sweat equity, but it's still time that takes out of my day. And I'm going to make a client happy. I'm going to go that extra mile

to make a client happy. And, uh, I got to tell you, man, I'm, I'm actually blown away with how much response their, their stuff has gotten in my feed. I'm just like, wow, people really like that product and that company. And, and we really got them some incredible exposure. So, um, in the end, everyone is happy. And, uh, these guys ended up, I actually did these guys a really big favor by, by focusing on customer service and giving them more. And, uh, and I gotta tell you, they've, they've actually gotten way more than the other people in the thing when it comes to our audience response, people that saw their promotion, people that responded to it than ever before. And so that's the real big picture.

I mean, you can't guarantee that's going to happen all the time when you try and save a client, when you try and save a client's relationship, you know, you can't guarantee the sort of results that we had there, but it's a really good example of the possibility of what's out there. If you just say, you know what, I'm going to make a client happy. I'm going to go for it. I might have to eat it in the short term. I'll tell you another story. Excuse me. I'll tell you another story. Years ago with our courier company, we would make people happy. And a lot of my other companies I've run the same way with. Our mortgage company, et cetera, et cetera, all that sort of good stuff.

And I remember with our courier company, people would pay monthly. And we were doing deliveries like FedEx and UPS, things like that, on a local scale for the mortgage industry. And so we're doing these deliveries and every now and then we'd screw something up. You know, something, some employee would screw something up, they would muck it up and all that good stuff. And it'd make them really unhappy to a point they wanted to quit. And, you know, it was one of those horrible things where a client, you know, really questions their relationship with you because, and you know, a lot of times it was out of our personal hands because, you know, an employee,

you know, didn't see a bag, didn't get delivered, got delivered to the wrong place. You know, there there's, you know, when you're running a large business, there's all sorts of, when there's all sorts of ways things can go wrong. So I remember, uh, one of the things I used to do was, uh, they used to be billed every day for packages for deliveries, pickups, and all that sort of good stuff. And so if we had to screw up, we would screw up one day, one day we'd screw up and, you know, kind of like, uh, I don't know, we, you know, lose a shipment, but we never lost a shipment. It's usually, it would just get screwed up, delivered the wrong place or not delivered on time, or, you know, it would fall behind some seed in the truck and then someone would deliver it.

And then we, you know, find it a day later, uh, that sort of thing. And, um, so what I would do is they would call up and they'd be very upset and they'd be, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and I always be honest with them too. This is really important as well. I should talk about this. It's really important to admit when you're wrong in business. That's really important in saving a client. Say, you know what? We screwed up, but we're going to fix this for you because we care about you. We care about your business.

We care about the long-term relationship we want to have for you. We're going to fix this. And that's the same thing that I do with the InfoComm show. And maybe they weren't sure if I was going to be sincere. They're like, is this guy really going to give us what we want or is he, you know, what's going on? So, um, what I would tell the people with, with our mortgage or with our career company is I'd say, you know what?

We screwed up and you've been with us for years and years and years, and we want you to be with us for years and years. The whole month is free for you. And they would be like, you screwed up one day and you're going to give us the whole month off for free. And I go, yeah, because that's how important our business and your business is to each other and how much we want you to be happy. So I'm going to, we screwed up once, but I'm going to take and wipe the whole month spilling for you. You're going to get a free month. We'll talk about keeping a client. You screw up. If you, if you screw up one thing by from Amazon, you know, they send you a product or some, and they go the next 30 products you

get for free, you're probably going to be like, well, I'm probably going to stick around. Um, so, you know, we work real hard to fix the problems and make sure that they didn't happen again. And, uh, of course, you know, we, we always knew with our management and how we ran our employees and everything that, you know, we screwed up that client. We need to work really hard to make sure that nothing happens to that client ever again. Uh, and, and there were times throughout our whole history, we had, like I said, we had some original clients for 13 years. And there were times where, I don't know, every three years we'd screw something up for a client.

We'd go one month for free. But that kept those clients with us. Literally, when I closed that business, I literally shut it down because I moved to another state. It wasn't worth the liability anymore. I was doing other businesses that we had investors for. And I literally said, here, just take a whole month for free. Now, that's very expensive.

But when you think about how much money we lost over that month by giving that client that month and making him happy for free. We need 13 years of income. So what is that? 480 months for 10 years and then 3 times 12 is 36. So what did I say? It's, boy, my brain just farted there. So 12 years times, no, 10 times 12 is, all right, anyway, you get the idea. It's late at night. I'm pumping out this podcast. So for all those months, what is that? A hundred plus months, giving away one or two free over the years,

that was well worth it to keep those clients happy, to make sure they didn't go anywhere else. Here's the other beautiful part about that. One thing I've found in doing business for so many years, especially when you're doing B2B business, if you really treat clients well in a business, in B2B business, there's always those employees that you work with that leave and they go someplace else, especially if you keep them for 13 years. They tend to, you know, if they work in a mortgage company, they go work in another mortgage company, and then they go work in another mortgage company, and sometimes they hop around.

And what's funny is wherever they go, they will take your service with you. And they always used to call us up and be like, hey, I moved over to XYZ Corporation. I'm now working over here and in control of everything, and I moved over to XYZ corporation. I'm, uh, now working over here and in control of everything. And I love working with you guys before. And I told him you got to use Chris Foss, Sultry Express, the company, all that sort of good stuff. And that was one of the beautiful things was the referral service. We would get out of it as the employees would move around to different companies. They would take us with them, et cetera, et cetera. And you just couldn't replace that value. And we had employees that moved multiple times to

multiple different companies and just spread us out, gave us more referrals, gave us more companies that we were working with. And just that value of not losing that client over one mistake and giving them the added value of a free month so that we keep them happy and give them more. I mean, we're giving them a lot more. They lost, you know, we lost a day's worth of business. We gave them a whole month. So, um, but, but that was our commitment to them. And as far as the customer is concerned, I, I believe, I think they always looked at it like this is how much Chris Voss values our business. He's willing to burn a whole month of income over one day's mistake because he cares about

our business that much. And he sees a long-term vision of us being a client for that long. And he really wants us to be there. And that's a commitment. And I don't think we ever lost any clients over that sort of offer I made to him. There was nobody who went, uh, I don't think we ever lost any clients over that sort of offer. I made to him, there was nobody who went, well, screw you. I'm leaving. Not on my free month. And they would stick with us. So, um, that's the beauty of, of giving clients extra. I'll tell you another story. I did the same thing with our mortgage business. We had a mortgage business for almost 20 years. And, uh, with the mortgage the mortgage business, every now and then we'd have some salesman, whoever the mortgage loan officer was, he'd screw something up.

He wouldn't listen to the client properly, even though we taught him to ask the client what they wanted to accomplish. He'd screw something up. And so they'd go to the closing and everything would be mucked up and we'd have to fix it. Now, when you're dealing with people's houses and stuff, it's a big deal. When you're going to closings, it's a big deal. If things get mucked up, it's a huge problem. And there were times where I would say to the client, you know what? We're not going to charge you for any of this. We're going to take our fees and we're going to wipe them. And for some people, that still wasn't good enough. And I'd say, you know what? I'm going to pay you. I'm just going to take our fees and we're going to wipe them. And, um, and for some people that still wasn't good enough.

And I'd say, you know what? I'm going to pay you. I'm just going to wipe our fees and I'm just going to pay a grand or two. How's that sound to you? I mean, if it was really bad, we do that. We just, I just be like, you know what? We're not going to charge you anything. And in fact, I'm going to pay a grand or two just to make you happy, pay you back for the

problem that we caused and everything else. Now, the alternative to this or not the alternative, but the addition to this is I would usually have to pay the salesperson for that unless the salesperson really screwed up on their part. It was something really small or something they just contributed to. It wasn't too big of a thing. I'd still have to pay the loan officer. So I'd eat it. But I got to tell you, in being in business for almost 20 years, we would have those clients come back. And it was always funny to me because I would, you know, when I would get the call, I would have, you know, them yelling and screaming and, you know, F you this and your F and company

did that. You know, when you're the CEO, those are the calls you can get sometimes. And I do whatever it would take to make those people happy. And, uh, and you know, what's funny, they would call us a year or two years or three years later. And they'd be like, Hey, Chris, remember me? And I'd be like, thinking in my mind, yeah, you're the guy who wanted to kill me and told me what a horrible person I was and everything else. And even once I gave you, uh, no cost or gave you some money for, to run with or, or whatever it was to make you happy, you know, you still kind of hated me. And I figured I'd probably never hear from you again.

And you know what they tell me every time it would blow my mind. Cause I'd be just like, I remember exactly, you know, cause we didn't screw up that often. I'd be like, I remember exactly what you, you know, how, how angry you were at me. You know what? They would love us. They would love us. They'd be like, Chris, you were so great. And your company was so great. And I'd just be sitting there in my brain going, do you even remember, are you, says someone kidnapped you? And do you even remember what happened like last year or two years ago or three years ago? And they'd be like, you're so great. And, uh, we do business with them then. And then we do business with them one, two, three years down the road. And we do business. So again, we had people that we did business with, I think up to 10 times throughout the mortgage thing.

And so that was another example of being able to turn around horrible, um, um, instances that happen in your business, things that fail, things that get screwed up, customers that get angry because you somehow fumble the ball in your business. And the more employees you have, you know, the more opportunities there to flow with the business. One of my favorite companies that does that too is Starbucks. There's a couple times where Starbucks has mucked up an order and they don't argue with me. They don't give me any guff or like, well, you did this and you did that. They just go, you know what? It's free. There it is. Do we need to make you another one? Do we need to give you some cookies? It's free. We screwed up somehow. You're not happy. We're

not going to try and figure out who's the blame here. We just want you to be happy. And you know what? I'm always happy. And it really happens at Starbucks, but that's really how you take care of customers because customers want to know that you care about them. I'm hoping that what we're going to come from this relationship from Infocom is we want to, of course, do a lot more with this client, and we're hoping that we proved our worth to them and that there'll be a long-term sort of relationship that will come from it. And I'm going to keep my fingers crossed, and we're going to try and make sure everyone always stays happy. But those are some examples.

If you're running a business, you're a small-time operator, maybe a solo entrepreneur, or you're running a big company, that's the power of customer service. And a lot of that seems to be lost today. A lot of, a lot of times in business when I, you know, a company fails for me, their attitude is just like, screw you. Um, you know, whatever. And, you know, they've gotten a million excuses. The one thing I used to do when people would, I always get the call from my executive secretary. There's somebody really angry on the line, Chris, it's a customer and they want to talk to the CEO and they're pissed. And I pick up the phone and I, and, and, you know, they'd be going on, they'd be going on. I'd listen to them and

I'd say, okay, so it sounds like you're really upset about this. How can we make you happy? What do we need to do to make you happy? How about if I do this to make you happy? How about if I do that to make you happy? They knew that I listened. They knew that I cared. And right away, it wasn't like me going, well, what did you do to screw this up? Was we're going to have to look into this and check with the employee. Maybe you lied to them or whatever. It was more important for me to make those people happy and just get to that moment. Because the more you bleed out that whole anger situation and blame situation and whatever the case may be, the more likely you're never going to get that client back. And the more likely they're just going to go, screw you,

I'm taking my ball and going home. So those are some great things that have worked for me over the years of being in business. Social media,'ve had social media clients, uh, agencies, things that we've had. Uh, sometimes when I really screwed up stuff, I'm just like, don't pay this month's bill. And I'm like, what you, you screwed up like a couple of days worth of things, or you didn't get something done and you're just going to wipe a whole month. Um, and to me, that's more important to me showing them that I care. And to me, some of those clients last almost, uh, you know, I think, I think our longest client we ever had with the agency was about eight years.

And yeah, we screwed some stuff up during the thing. We give a whole free month. I think there was a couple of times where they got behind another bill and I even just called them up and said, look, we don't want to lose you for a client. We don't want to cut you off. I'll tell you what, just pay half and then let's just pay on time from here on out. And, uh, we'll keep you as a, as a, as a person, you know, we, we kind of reached a point where like, we need to, we need to quit working with this person cause they're not paying

their bill. They're really behind. Um, and the person's like, well, I didn't get this bill then and that bill then. And so I just said to him, I said, look, I'll tell you what, pay us half of what, you know, we're arguing about what you owe us and, you know, here's the billing history and stuff that you didn't pay. So here's what we're going to do. If you can pay half that, we're going to eat the other half because you're that important to us as a client. We kept those people for years thereafter, and I'm sure we made our profit margins back

on it. So that's kind of something I've always done throughout my whole career of owning businesses. And to me, it's kept more customers and clients with us. It's kept more people caring about us and knowing that we care about them. And that's real important in your relationship with customer service. You know, in today's age, that value seems to be completely lost. I grew up in the age of Tom Peters in search of excellence. And if you haven't read that book, especially if you're a millennial or, you know, the new gen X, Y, whatever it is this week, gen Z, make sure you read those books. Customer service is now at the, probably the highest order premium. If you can care about customers, love them, give them more than you

could, than, than even what you promised them. I mean, usually, even if I go into a contract situation with a client, I try and look and go, uh, is there some room here where I can give them a little extra? And then we get done. I'm going to say, here's what we did for you. And here's the results. And by the way, just cause we love you, care about you, like you, we give you this extra. Now we don't do it and then they just expect that it's always done and stuff like that. We make a real big point of going, we give you a little extra bump here just because we felt like it. You're a good client. We like you and we want you to like us. So we did a little extra for you. Now, I'm not sure we'll always be able to do that for you, but I just want you to know

that little part that's there, that was the juice. That was a little extra for you. Now, I'm not sure we'll always be able to do that for you, but I just want you to know that little part that's there, that was the juice. That was a little extra for you. And that means a lot to clients. So be sure to take that into effect, especially when you're doing customer service these days, because customer service is just, it seems like it's dead. I mean, it seems like all the Tom Peters in the search of excellence books have just been thrown in the toilet because no one seems to care anymore. You know, I've been, I've been dealing with a lot of websites and the promotions we do and stuff that we do. And like most websites, they don't answer inquiries for three to four days. I've seen sometimes two weeks go by before the answer to inquiry.

I'm like, how many customers are you losing? Cause customers are asking inquiries and it'll stay right on the website. It takes us sometimes three to four days to answer inquiries. What? These are your customers. They're sitting there with fistfuls of dollars in their hands going, shut up and take my money. And you're like, can you come back next week? Because, you know, we got too much money, I guess. Meanwhile, you know, they're, they're in the, uh, board meetings going, we're going broke. We need more

money. How can we get more revenue? That always kills me when companies like we need to figure out how to make more revenue. Well, guess what? You don't need to figure out how to make more revenue. You need to figure out how to serve more customers and make them happy and figure out where you're blowing off customers that are trying to hand you their money in your process. That's, that's the real truth there. So anyway, that's a good example. Uh, we were really happy that, uh, our client at, at Infocom, um, who wasn't sure if they wanted to stick with us through, uh, me being sick, uh, stuck with us. And, uh, we're really happy at some of the results we're seeing. Holy crap. They, they ended up being the most loved, um, uh, client that we worked with at Infocom and got the most results and everything

else. It's pretty crazy. I mean, just, just by a multitude of times of the others. I don't know why it worked out that way. It just, uh, that's serendipity for you. So there you go. Uh, but for me, what that tells me is that the fact that I care enough about my client that I, that I hope that hopefully we'll have a future relationship. And I wanted to invest in that to see, to me, that's an investment. It's not like, well, we're going to lose some money and we're gonna have to eat that. And probably it's just better to tell the client to bugger off and give them their money back and burn them. Uh, no, man, no, man, you make that sort of investment and the client will hopefully go, wow, man, this guy, this guy goes the extra

mile. He cares. I mean, who would you want to have a relationship with somebody who goes the extra mile for you or somebody who just goes, uh, you know, we don't want to do that extra work for you. We don't care about you that much as a customer. And you know what, to be honest with you, if they came back to me and said, you know, we still don't really feel like we got our money's worth. I'd be like, you know what, what do we got to do to get your money's worth? What else, what extra can I do for you? Um, because to me that keeps them doing business with me longer, keeps them, uh, building a relationship with me longer, getting to know me more and longer.

You know, I remember the old, what was it? There's an old Nordstrom tale of them actually taking a tire as a return or something in exchange for a product or something. And they don't sell tires in Nordstrom. If you're familiar, it's just clothes and different accessories for clothes. And there's a lot of great customer service things, especially in the search of excellence by Tom Peters. So I'd encourage you to check that out, but do that.

If you're ever at a point with a client where, and there are clients that can be out of hand, but a lot of times that's because you didn't program things right from the get go expectations. You didn't have a good solid contract, et cetera, et cetera. But there are times where mistakes happen on your part or your company's part of your employees part. Instead of looking at like, well, we're just going to have to blow off this client and they're going to go their way and they're, we're going to go ours and we're just going to call it irreconciled differences. Instead, look at it like a huge long-term marriage and be like, how do we get over this bump in the road? How do we make this client happy? How do we make sure that we care about them as people? I look at my clients, I want them all

to be successful and hopefully what we're doing for them to be successful. There's times where I've done projects for clients that it didn't turn out as good as they wanted. And I'll say, you know what? Uh, okay. I can see that, you know, we, we, we should have done things better here and there. Maybe we shouldn't have been watching this or maybe, you know, whatever, whatever took place. I'm like, okay, so you know what, what do we got to do extra for you to make you happy? What can I do to, you know, give you more service, give you more what? What do we got to do extra for you to make you happy? What can I do to, you know, give you more service, give you more product? What do I got to do? Because I want you to be happy.

I want to continue to do business with you. And not severing that relationship is so important because once you sever it, you know, they're going to hate you forever. You're probably going to hate them forever. And you're just going to be like, ah, those guys. And they'll be like, ah, those guys. And that's the end of it. Uh, and the other thing I want to point out is, uh, this came back from my learning of business. Keeping clients is, I forget what it is. It's like, it's six times

harder. I think it is to get a new client than it is to keep a client. Uh, you can correct me if I'm wrong in the stream somewhere, but I believe if I recall rightly, it's six times harder to get a new client than to keep a current client. So it just makes logical sense to try and care about those people, to do extra for them, to repair any damage they may have and everything else. Recently, I had a client, which is like the first one in 10 years who, uh, kept screwing up, not showing up for a podcast, uh, two or three times and everything else. And, um, I think the third time he showed up in his mother's basement with the whole mess of crap behind him and the audio wasn't working and, and he'd not done any of the things

they needed to do to give us a good broadcast. And I said, you know, I care about his client. This isn't going to represent you well. The audio is breaking up. You know, this is going to be a product that's going to stand forth for up to 10 years like our other video products. And this isn't the way you want to represent your business. And he was really angry at me because I wouldn't make a bad representation for his business. I said, let's just reschedule this.

So the client canceled with us and said, you know, whatever. And he really missed out on an opportunity that we would have said, you know what, how can we make this better for you? I mean, certainly the onus was on him for not showing up three times and burning an extra three hours of our time. But even in that moment, we still would have went, how can we make you happy? What extra can we do? Blah, blah, blah. Now there are some clients that no matter what you do, if you, you, you could crawl your, you know, some of the relationships I've been in, you can crawl up on a cross. And, you know, I think I've sent a couple of my

girlfriends. If I crawled up on a cross right now and crucified myself and stabbed myself and then died, would that make you fucking happy? And they'll be like, no. And you're like, okay, well, it tells us where we're at here, doesn't it? And sometimes clients are the same way where, um, you know, you just can't make them happy, but it's really, really, really rare. I, at least in my experience, um, maybe that's because I just care about clients and I'm willing to go that extra mile. So I think you get the big vision of what I'm giving you here and some of the different aspects and ways of thinking about it. And so next time you're having a client and you've screwed something up, or maybe there's some sort of contentious issue, maybe they've screwed something

up and they think you're at fault for it. And instead of arguing about who's at fault for this, say, you know what, how can we make everybody happy? How can we do a win-win situation here? And look at the long-term vision of it. Where if I save this client, if I make them happy, and I'm going to have to eat a couple, you know, some sweat equity or eat some money or costs, I'm going to have to eat an invoice. If I can make that client

happy, how many more years can I keep them as a client? And they're going to be happy. I'm going to be happy. Everyone wins. But how can we get over this little hump here? And I think that's somewhat important in what you want to do. So in today's world of crappy customer service, try to make your clients happy and don't get focused on that short ball. Focus on the long ball of what the potential is if you can make a client happy. And now it's one year safe because if it's six times harder in cost to get a new client to replace a current client, so you eat an invoice. You can eat up six invoices technically, you know, just on the simple format I'm putting forward, of course. But I think you get the idea.

Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to give excellent customer service to your clients. Read The In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters. He also has another great book that I love called Thriving on Chaos. It's great for running a business if you haven't gotten it or read it. Highly recommend it for anyone who's an entrepreneur. Anyway, guys, if you have more topics you'd like me to talk about on the show, go to the Chris Voss channels, at Chris Voss Twitter, at Chris Voss on Facebook,

at Chris Voss on LinkedIn. Follow me there. Send me a note. So, hey, Chris, I listen to the podcast. Here's some ideas. Here's some questions I have. Here's some things I'd like you to talk about. Or, hey, Chris, I listen to the podcast. Here's some ideas. Here's some questions I have. Here's some things I'd like you to talk about. Or, hey, Chris, I'm just following you.

Can you follow me back, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll give you some extra love. Because you know what? I care about you as a client, too. So how's that? Because hopefully you'll send me a link and say, hey, man, Chris, let's be friends. Let's pair up on social media. And 10 years from now, we'll be sitting around having a beer somewhere. How's that sound? Anyways, thanks for tuning in.

Be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, pool boys, mistresses, all of them. You know, if you got five pool boys out there and you're, you're, uh, one of those wonderful cougars, Hey, good on you, man. Get them all subscribed to the podcast. That way has, uh, uh, I don't know, you're sitting by the pool with the pool boy, you can get in that suntan, you can be listening to the Chris Voss show. I don't know why you'd mix those two, but I sure appreciate it. I don't know what we're talking about here at the end. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in.

We'll see you. We'll see you next time. What do you do with a pool? Hey, Chris, I feel like this is one of those things at the end of the movie where after the credits, there's just like added crap when everyone else has left the student of theater. Um, some, maybe some will write me and be like, hey, Chris, you know what me and the pool boy do when the husband's out of town?

Well, what? We just sit by the pool and listen to Chris Voss show, man. Oh, yeah, it's hot. That's never going to happen. And thanks for tuning in, guys. See ya.