We recently published a guide on ‘How to get the GOLD out of customer complaints’, which explored the reasons why complaints are of a huge benefit to your business, as well as simple strategies on managing negative detractor feedback. To download the guide click the link at the bottom of the page - we highly recommend that any business worth it’s CX salt understands why customer complaints are important to them and how to treat them. We know the potential cost that detractor feedback can have for a business. We also know that efficient resolutions cause uplift in customer experience metrics and the resulting the boost in revenue.
When it comes to dealing with customers who are unhappy, or even angry - your approach should include a range of considerations. These include empathy, great communication skills, agile problem solving and brand values that embrace the customer at its core. We’ve distilled these down to a simple S.O.S./G.O. strategy you can use as a springboard to evolving your own complaint management process.
S.O.S.
SAY SORRY
Apologising is disarming and non-confrontational for the customer. It shows you are there to understand their situation and help.
- Start the conversation with a statement like ”we are really sorry that your experience wasn’t great this time and we want to fix it if we can”.
- Keep your emotions in check. Sometimes complaints can seem personal, as the customer feels they didn’t get what they wanted or expected.
- Building trust and speaking in a calm and respectful way will help calm down an unhappy customer.
- Most customers that have given strongly worded, written feedback are rarely still emotional when you respond to them quickly or speak to them in person.
OPEN THE CONVERSATION
It is important to be open and caring for the customers’ situation, so that they know you are there to help them.
- Listening about how someone is feeling about the experience, sometimes leads to hearing about what the situation actually is. It helps to know that, during a complaint, strong emotions can come to the foreground, pushing the details of the event to the back.
- Be supportive throughout the conversation and try and get to the cause of the situation if possible.
- Make sure you understand the details of what happened.
- The complaint can often come about from a misunderstanding which can be explained and clarified, or a easy solution to their pain point.
- Ask the customer to tell you what it would take to fix the issue to their satisfaction.
It is worth noting that most customers only want what they were after in the first place.
SOLUTION
Provide a solution you think will work for both parties. Once you agree on a solution or next steps, make sure the customer is happy with that outcome.
- It is very important that you follow through on the agreed action, as this shows that you genuinely care and want to fix any issue in a timely manner.
- Make sure people in your team dealing with customer complaints are empowered to act quickly and appropriately for the customer.
- Ideally, minor complaints can be dealt with in one interaction.
- Have clear, documented guidelines on what solutions a staff member has available to them.
- Let the customer know that post-conversation, you will relay the information from the conversation to your team and learnings can be had.
- Ensure that there is an escalation process for major complaints, communicated to a manager who can act on it quickly.
- Record the process to make sure it is completed, and the business can learn.
G.O.
will enable your business learn from complaints and continue to improve:
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
A complaint is a golden opportunity to keep your customer’s business before it’s lost for good, and a chance to see your business from a customer perspective.
- You can build a stronger relationship with the customer and create a new raving fan because of the way you managed the issue.
OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN
Use the learnings from your complaints to improve your business. If you don’t learn from your complaints, the leaks in the bucket won’t get plugged and the complaints will continue to damage your reputation. The process of dealing with complaints and closing the loop has to be a part of a wider customer experience strategy, with someone assigned specifically to dealing with customer feedback.
- Share feedback that is relevant with people in your teams to help them improve.
- Enable visibility of the feedback learnings across the business units to enable them to learn and grow.
- Measure the feedback and track improvements in customer satisfaction resulting from those improvements.
Loyal customers are the wonder drug for any business. They spend more over a longer time period and refer other customer to your business. So, don’t shy away from complaints - handled with care, most detractors can be turned around to become a promoter and loyal customer. Happy customers help make businesses more profitable and underpin growth.
