How Does Your Business React To Customer Complaints?

In today’s Internet-driven market place, customers exercise more power than ever before. A satisfied customer may share their good experience with a few friends, whereas an angry customer has the potential to reach thousands of contacts in social networks and communities.  And for each customer that complains, there are anywhere from tens to thousands of people that don’t complain. 

Unfortunately they silently stop doing business with your firm.

Complaints happen every day. When a customer complains, it is usually for a good reason or genuine concern. They usually have made a purchase that did not meet their expectation, a product, service, or maybe a combination of the two. In the customer service industry, we cannot avoid complaints. 

We must take care of the customer by listening to the complaint, and resolving it, to ensure a happy customer. Fewer than half of unhappy customers will bring a complaint to your attention. 

Those who never say anything will directly tell an average of 11 other people about their bad experience. It is important that we recognize complaints as opportunities, so we can sway these averages, one resolved complaint at a time.

Customers want to know someone is listening and they are understood, and they are hoping you are willing to take care of the problem to their satisfaction. No matter what the situation is, when a customer brings a complaint to your attention, even if they do it in a less-than-desirable way, be thankful. As the old saying goes, “You can’t fix it, if you don’t know it’s broken.” Moreover, we must realize that improper handling of a customer complaint can be costly to the business.

Keep in mind when you’re facing negative word of mouth, time is not on your side. The longer you wait to respond, the angrier the customer will get, and the more likely others will pick up on the issue and spread of the negative buzz.

The only thing worse than ignoring upset customers is to respond with a canned corporate response. If you thought they were mad before, wait until you see how they react to an excerpt of your policy terms and fine print.

Show empathy, communicate in a friendly tone and use your real name. And if the forum supports it, it helps to include your actual photo.

It’s easy to yell and scream at an anonymous company. But when someone shows up and says, “Hi, this is Emily and I’m so sorry for the trouble…” it changes everything.

The critic now realizes he wasn’t yelling at a giant, faceless company. He was yelling at Emily. Quickly, the anger fades, and you’ll often get an apology.

Are you looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software should be your solutions. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com