Handling Customer Complaints

Customer complaints are expressions of dissatisfaction from a consumer to a responsible party. They are often a sign that there is a disconnect between what customers expected and what a company delivered. Complaints can be made in several ways, including directly to the company or through a third party. Here are some tips for managing customer complaints:

1. Examine the feedback: To fix a problem, you need to know what it is. Examine the feedback you're getting to identify the complaints.
2. Talk to your service team: Share the feedback with your service team and discuss their pain points. Gather additional insights and identify areas where service processes can be improved.
3. Record complaints: Use customer service software to record complaints, so they can be analysed and shared with other departments across the business. You can also use surveys or community forums to collect customer feedback proactively.
4. Analyse complaints: Analyse the complaints to determine if they contain genuinely useful feedback. Ask questions like "Has this happened to the customer before?" and "Have other customers experienced this as well?".
5. Resolve the issue: Take the steps needed to resolve the customer's issue and share the resolution with the customer.
6. Follow up: Follow up with the customer to ensure that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction.

It's important to remember that not all customer complaints will be resolved to the customer's satisfaction, and some customers may still walk away upset. However, by effectively dealing with customer complaints, companies can use customer feedback as an opportunity to learn, improve, and prevent a buyer from churning.

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Once you develop a policy, you can create a procedure for handling complaints. A procedure will ensure that complaints are always handled in a similar approach, following your company standards. The procedure should be easy for your entire team to understand and follow.

1. Listen to the complaint
2. Record details of the complaint
3. Get all the facts
4. Discuss options for fixing the problem
5. Act quickly
6. Keep your promises
7. Follow up

By preparing for handling customer complaints ahead of time, you can prepare before real-life negative interactions occur. This has three purposes:

1. Tackling negativity, whether it's in the form of customer complaints or negative feedback, is crucial for maintaining a positive brand image and customer satisfaction.
2. Discuss rationale for the change. If the decision to make a change was well-thought-out and backed by data, you can move forward knowing you made the right decision, even if it ruffles some customers' feathers.
3. Rehearse answers and get everyone on the same page. It’s not about creating support robots who copy and paste the same replies to customers; it’s about creating a consistent support experience for customers.