Customer service has proven to be a very difficult part of business for me. Selling online digital products has proven to have it's own challenges. One of the most stressful examples I have is as follows.
I was working with a Business Plus client for about three months. I wrote featured spotlights, hosted mini contests and syndicated their content into a few blog sites for backlinks and some social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The customer always has the right in the eyes of PayPal and this is a huge issue in my opinion.
I've worked for this client for three months and did everything I said I was going to do.
The Customer Gets An Automatic PayPal Refund?
They filed an unauthorized transaction and without any word from me PayPal took the money that I worked hard for, and placed it into a temporary hold.
The worst part about this is I have no chance whatsoever to get my money back and the buyer is now ignoring me and my e-mails.
Ironically the buyer shuts down their blog site and social media accounts, like many bloggers they quickly realized blogging was hard and earning from their site was merely impossible. They canceled their hosting and domain, got a refund from GoDaddy for the payments sent and they were trying to get back the money for three months of blog marketing with Blog Engage.
Thankfully these circumstances don't happen often, in fact this was only the second time since 2007 I've experienced such a scam customer when online marketing.
The reality is no matter what marketing services you use, it will not make your blog a success. Your written content and blog quality is what will be making you success. You have to have good content and you have to have a great blog overall. I guess what I'm saying is if you are in a small niche that is not desirable by many bloggers than your results from a marketing service will vary and possibly be little to nothing.
On the other hand if you have a smashing blog with great content, then your value and results from a marketing service will be better than the other blogger. You will drive traffic, receive new blog comments and more.
This is how it works, if you write about popular topics the traffic will come, if you pick a non popular niche, well sadly no one cares to read or visit your blog.
I Did My Part To Keep A Happy Customer
This is the hard part about customer satisfaction, but is the customer always right? Because my service didn't help this blogger does it mean I have to refund them? I don't think the answer is yes, but with that said I always refund my customers for the services they aren't happy with. It's a hard one to swallow knowing I had to feature them on our blog, I syndicated and shared all the posts on all the social media sites as promised.
This is a huge issue with online marketing, I cannot make a poor quality blog a good one no matter what I do; I can however market it like I market my popular clients, this is what I'm getting paid to do. I don't think their lack of success should be my responsibility, I'm not a magic worker, I'm an online marketer. Blog Engage is not magic people, if your blog sucks prior to joining, chances are it will suck when using the community as well. The same can be said when you have great content and quality posts Blog Engage will help bring your blog to the next level.
As an online entrepreneur it's frustrating when something like this happens, but things like this do happen. We just have to remember customer service is important and even when we don't like it, the customer is always right as PayPal proves this by refunding the money without questioning me. The only way to dispute such an item is to provide shipping details, how the heck am I supposed to do that with online digital goods?
Why Is the customer always right?
What's your opinion on the matter? When the work is done should I have the right to get paid no matter the bloggers success? Should I refund the money without having the ability to argue the fact that I actually worked for this client and now it's all for free? What's your opinion on the “Customer is always right” statement?