Customer First: Customer Avoidance: Do you do it? By Allwell Nwankwo

You are in a tight corner.  Or so it seems.  You couldn’t deliver the goods on schedule.  You couldn’t fix the customer’s problem when you promised you would.  Or you couldn’t meet some other deadlines you agreed with the customer.  So what do you do?
If you love (what appears to be) the easy way out, you may refuse to visit the customer, at least for now.  Or even refuse to pick her calls.  After all, there is simply nothing else to tell her.  You have already used every excuse (read lie) you can think of – port congestion, server downtime, missing cargo, problems with documentation, unavailability of the delivery truck, your urgent trip to the sun (although you were in Lagos all the while) and all what not.  So, the best thing to do is to avoid the customer until, somehow, Providence decides to help you out of the mess.  In this situation, it is also risky to take calls from unknown callers because you may unwittingly pick the call of the angry customer you wish to avoid.  The danger, however, is that if you refuse to take calls from unknown callers, you may miss out on good business leads too.
Well, no cause for alarm (hopefully).  You are not alone.  In fact, you are in good company because a lot of sales people do the same thing.  The only problem is that it is a dangerous kind of company to keep!
Let’s tell ourselves some truths.  Whatever makes a salesman or other frontline employee avoid a customer and her calls is indeed awful.
Interestingly, sales people sometimes talk themselves into this kind of hypertension-friendly situation.  In a bid to make a sale, they promise heaven and earth.  They can promise to deliver next week even when they are yet to place the order for a product with an eight-week lead time.  Such people see selling as a game of football in which you keep dribbling the customer until somebody scores.  Unfortunately, they can only score own goals for as long as they fail to see the connection between keeping promises and customer loyalty.  Playing hide-and-seek with customers not only hurts the reputation of the individual salesman, but also that of the organisation. And we all know what the results for the business are likely to be.
Interestingly, some top executives actively use their secretaries or personal assistants to shield themselves from customers. A participant at a workshop shared her frustration about a boss who would always claim to be in a meeting whenever she didn’t want to see a customer. On a particular occasion, a customer insisted he would wait until the end of the meeting. Well, the “big boss” eventually came out to see the customer. And, guess what? She was grinning from ear to ear as if she was not the same person that had tried to avoid the customer!
If you ask me, I’ll advise that under no circumstance should you avoid seeing a customer or picking her calls.  Indeed, the best time to respond to customer calls promptly is when you know things are not working as planned – if for nothing else, to reassure the customer that you haven’t abandoned her.  You need to keep the customer regularly informed of the efforts you are making to resolve her challenges.
The challenge I see is that many of us find it difficult to tell customers the truth. But we need to tell them the truth, in an agreeable manner.  Don’t let a customer pressure you into agreeing to a deadline you know you can’t meet.  There is some sense in telling a customer.  “I sincerely wouldn’t like to disappoint you.  Your trust is important to me.  That’s why I have offered to deliver on Thursday rather than Tuesday.”
Ordinarily, most customers will understand when things don’t work as planned so long as they notice a sincere attempt to do the right thing.  It is the shenanigans of frontline people (and their bosses) that irritate them.  It is bad enough that someone couldn’t fulfil their own side of the deal (as a service provider). Avoiding the customer at such times amounts to adding insult to injury.*