10 Things That Annoy Your Customers

If you run a business, the last thing you want to do is annoy your customers in any way at all. Customers who are annoyed are not only pretty difficult to deal with but they are also more likely to leave bad reviews and less likely to give you their repeat business which is far from ideal if you are looking to build a successful company.

two people sitting inside cafeteria by the glass wall

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most common things that annoy customers, so you can hopefully avoid them in your own business and ensure your customers are as happy as can be.

1. Being kept waiting

If there is one thing customers hate it is being kept waiting when they try to get in touch with you, especially if they are left on hold on the phone for what seems like an eternity. By the time they do get to speak to a customer service agent they will likely be very wound up and angry and that means it will be much harder on you and them to get their problem resolved.

The good news is, you can easily minimize the chances of this happening by learning how to add live chat software for businesses and by offering email support so that they have a wide range of options. If your business is large enough to have a significant amount of queries, then hiring plenty of customer service staff to stay on top of them is also pretty sensible.

2. Clueless staff

If customers need to get in touch with you, something else that will annoy them immensely is being forced to deal with staff who do not know what they are talking about. If you and your employees (if you have any) cannot answer basic questions about the products you sell and how to put them together, as well as other common queries such as shipping costs and how to make a return, then you can bet that any customers who need that information will get very annoyed very fast. 

Training is really important for this reason. Think about anything a customer could possibly ever want to ask about the things you sell and make sure you and anyone else who works for you knows how to answer those questions and you can avoid any annoyance and ill will.

3. Terrible websites

Pretty much every business needs a website in 2022, but if your website is badly designed and difficult to use, you might as well not have one at all because it will almost certainly annoy your customers and prevent you from making any sales.

A good website should be simply designed, easy to use, able to load quickly and optimize to work with any device. If you cannot design such a website yourself, then using a decent template, or even better, hiring a good web designer to create one for you, is a good way to avoid this particular form of annoyance.

4. Pushy salespeople

If you run the kind of business where you or a team of salespeople acting on your behalf will need to talk to potential customers in order to convince them to make a sale, then you should know that pushy salespeople are one of the most common annoyances amongst customers.

No one likes to feel pressured into buying something; they like to feel like they are being treated with respect and furnished with all of the facts so that they can come to their own conclusions about whether to buy. So, instead of pushing your stuff on them, be as informative as you can and you are likely to get a better outcome.

This goes for online content too; instead of using lots of salesy speak, try to focus on what the product does and why it is beneficial instead.

5. Slow shipping

Many customers of online businesses state long shipping times as being one of the most annoying things online businesses do. Sometimes, long shipping times are unaffordable if you are making goods to order or shipping them overseas, for example, but if you can possibly find a way to expedite shipping on your orders, doing so is going to make the majority of your customers a whole lot happier.

Offering a specific date and time for shipping is also something that could help to make your customers happier than ever and help you to beat the completion too because people hate being out when their packages come and they also get annoyed if they have to take time off to wait in for an important package. Get your shipping options right and you could really slay the competition.

6. Rudeness

This one almost goes without saying because no one likes to be spoken to in a rude manner and customers are no exception. However, so many companies do not offer their employees any training in how to speak patiently and pleasantly to customers that it is definitely worth attaining that rudeness is a huge factor in what causes customers to become annoyed. Don’t let it ruin your company’s reputation by ensuring that your employees if you have any, are trained in customer service and good etiquette if they are going to spend any time at all interacting with customers.

7. Lack of empathy

On a related note, if your customers do not feel like you care about their problems, they are likely to get pretty annoyed., You might think that their issues are trivial, but you can not let them know that you feel that way if you want them to come away from an interaction feeling positive.

Being able to empathize with the issue they are having and show them sympathy as well as going what you can to resolve their issues will make them feel listened to and could be enough to turn an issue into a positive if you go about it in the right way.

8. Red tape

If your customers have to go through a mind-boggling number of steps just to make a purchase, chances are most of them won’t. Only the most loyal customers who love your products and services the most will bother battling with the red tape, and they will still be annoyed to have to do that. 

Obviously, there are some rules and regulations that must be followed in certain industries, but what you should not do is make things more complicated than they need to be. In business, simple is always best.

9. Broken promises

One of the worst things you can ever do in business is to make promises you simply cannot keep. If you tell a customer that you will do something for them or that your product will be able to do something for them, and you or it fail to deliver, they will be rightly annoyed. 

Customers need to be able to trust you when they are making a purchase and if they cannot do that not only will they be annoyed, but they will not shop with you again, they will leave bad reviews and there will be a stain on your reputation.

Luckily, it’s really easy to avoid this becoming an issue by underpromising what you are able to do, that way, when you overdeliver, your customers will be even more impressed, and on those occasions when you aren’t quite able to overdeliver, then the customer will be none the wiser, and they will think they were getting exactly what they were promised which means they will still be happy.

10. New deals for new customers

Okay, so there is nothing annoying about new deals for new customers when you are the new customer who is benefitting from that discount or free gift or whatever, but when you are a loyal and longstanding customer and you get to watch lots of new customers getting a better deal than you are, well that can really stick in the craw.

It is, of course, important to incentivize new customers to your business but it is even more important to ensure you are trusting your loyal existing customers right too, so try to get the balance right by coming up with new offers for both.

Setting up a loyalty scheme for existing customers to rack up points and get money off is often a good way of keeping them onside while also giving your scope to come up with different offers for new clients, but you need to ensure you are being fair to everyone if you want to stop them getting annoyed with you.

As you can see, there are a lot of very common issues that can cause your customers to become angry and annoyed if you are not careful, but now you know what they are, you can do your best to ensure they are not an issue for your customers, and this will give you your best chance of building a loyal customer base and a successful business. Good luck.

Krystal | Sunny Sweet Days
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