As business owners have you ever considered how you act as a customer will reflect on your own business?

Time and again I have run across business owners who are not the best customers. They are rude, not professional and just plain hard to deal with.

For instance I just recently had a customer who purchased a downloadable e-book from one of my sites. I have all products set up to be instantly emailed to customers upon purchase or they are redirected to a webpage to download the product. Unbeknownst to me the website had gone down during the night while I was sleeping since the web hosting company I have my site through was doing updates and the servers were down for a couple hours. This was not something in my control and rarely happens but if you have a website you realize this type of thing happens from time to time.

The customer purchased the e-book during the night while I was sleeping and they did not receive it as it should have been sent automatically. The next morning I woke up and went to work and saw an email from this customer. I opened it up and was shocked!

Not only did they say they had been working online for 3 years trying to make a money online but they were tired of being scammed by people...then they went on to say that means you and more words were said which I will not elaborate on. The time that had passed from when they purchase the e-book to the time I got the email the next morning was only a few hours not days or weeks.

My first instinct of course was to rectify the problem which is what I did I emailed the customer with their purchase and apologized for the inconvenience and explained that the site had been down. Normally I not only send the purchased product but either send more items or offer a discount on their next purchase, after verifying that they did purchase from my sites. This time I was so floored by the rude comments, the words used in the email I did not.

After rectifying the situation I started wondering what business they owned.

Why?

What you do as a customer reflects on your own business!

If I was treated like this only a few short hours after a mistake happened on my own site how would I be treated if I ordered from them? Would they offer good customer service? Would I get my product?

No wonder this customer never made any money online, if you cannot be a good customer yourself how do you expect to be a good business owner.

So the next time you are a customer and a problem occurs with a purchase, remember the way you act reflects onto your own business. Give the owner the benefit of the doubt. Contact them politely and tell them there was a problem with their product and see if they can resend it or re-mail it to you. Be polite!

Now I am not talking about repeat problems with a website, or its been weeks or months and you havent received your product. I am talking about the very first time you contact another owner about a problem you have with a product.

Ask yourself this question: How would I as a business owner want a customer to treat me should they run across a problem with one of my products or services?

Rebecca White

Rebecca White has been marketing online for over 3 years. During the 3 years she has used e-books and software products that she has purchased to help her become the well known WAHM internet marketing expert that she is today. She started out on the internet not knowing how to build a website, not knowing how to market online. Once she started teaching herself from e-books and online seminars she was able to offer what she learned to others.