When it comes to failed customer service, everybody’s got their favourite horror story. People love to share tales of how businesses mess up. However, what really matters is not what went wrong, but how the situation was handled.
If nothing ever goes wrong, then no one ever finds out how good – or otherwise – a business’s customer complaints procedure actually is. And if your customers have complaints that are appropriately resolved, they may well become better customers than those who haven’t ever had cause to complain.
The reason for that is simple; they now have confidence that if anything else should go wrong, the company has the ability to deal with it appropriately.
Handle it badly, however, and you can expect to feature prominently on social media and in the local press – and it simply isn’t true that all publicity is good publicity!
So how do you make sure things are dealt with appropriately? As with all things, a little planning and training – and a systematic approach – goes a long way.
Three-step system for effective complaint handling
It’s a good idea to put in place a system for handling complaints and make sure all customer-facing staff understand it and know how to put it into practice. Bear in mind there’ll be some side issues to look at, too – dealing with anger, keeping people to the point, asking useful questions – and build those into your training programme. It will also be necessary to identify the ‘professional complainers’, those people who are just after a freebie.
You should also bear in mind that your people may deal with complaints over the phone, by email, or face-to-face, and make sure your system accounts for the differences.
Here are the three steps:
Step 1: Listen to the details of the complaint, ask appropriate questions to fill in any gaps, and repeat back key information to show you understand the situation.
Step 2: Empathise with the customer; even if the problem is a result of their own misunderstanding, acknowledge their feelings.
Step 3: Do what you said you would, and do it quickly – don’t leave the customer hanging on or cause them to get in touch again.
Let’s look at those in a little more detail.
Step 1: Listen to the details of the complaint, ask appropriate questions to fill in any gaps, and repeat back key information to show you understand the situation.
Especially when people complain, it’s essential that they feel they are being taken seriously. When you are listening, nod and make eye contact. If you’re dealing with the issue on the phone, use comments such as ‘I see,’ and ‘okay,’ to let the other person know you are paying attention.
If you need more information, you’ll need to ask questions. The two most common types are closed and open.
Closed and open questions
Closed questions ask for specific information; for example, ‘Was it in your name?’ or ‘What time did this happen?’ They generally encourage only short answers, such as ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘six o’clock’, etc. They’re also really useful for keeping ramblers to the point!
Open questions invite more detail; for example, ‘What happened next?’
Repeat back the information
When you’ve finished the investigative stage of complaint handling, you should repeat back your understanding of the issue, both to let the customer know you understand and to give them chance to correct anything you perhaps haven’t got quite right.
Dealing with anger
If the customer is angry, then you’ll need to let them get it out of their system. Let them know you are listening and avoid the temptation to tell them to calm down – it will have the opposite effect.
Having said that, no one should have to put up with abuse and if someone is being abusive they should be warned that it won’t be tolerated. If they are on the phone, the team member should hang up if they persist; if they are face-to-face, staff would have to ask them to leave the premises. It might also be necessary for the team member to leave the area. Make sure there is a procedure in place so that either someone senior steps in or a colleague comes to act as backup if that should happen.
Step 2: Empathise with the customer; even if the problem is the result of their misunderstanding, acknowledge their feelings.
Let the customer know you understand how they feel. You can use simple phrases such as, ‘I understand’, or, ‘I know how you feel’, or ‘that must have been a surprise’, whatever is appropriate.
By now, the customer should be confident you understand the issue and appreciate how it has made them feel. You can now move on to propose a solution.
Step 3: Do what you said you would, and do it quickly – don’t leave the customer hanging on or cause them to get in touch again.
This goes without saying – if you fail to do what was agreed, you might as well have ignored them from the start!
It’s a good idea to authorise your people to fix problems without any ‘runaround’, just as they do at certain other companies that are renowned for their customer service – think Ritz Carlton Hotels, Southwest Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines, and Richer Sounds, to name but a few.
Give your people the authority to send a customer a bottle of wine, flowers or whatever is appropriate, perhaps up to a certain amount or value – this becomes part of your company’s ‘WOW’ factor, one of the ways in which people are seriously impressed.
A further benefit is that customers who complain give you valuable information about your business, so don’t just deal with the customer – deal with the problem!
Not sure where to begin?
Ideally, what you need is a robust system that allows staff to deal with complaints, no matter how they come in to the business. It should also capture relevant data, so that if there’s a flaw in some other procedure or system that is causing problems further down the line, it can be fixed. Yes, you need to address the symptoms – in this case the complaint – but the symptoms will keep recurring if the root cause isn’t also dealt with.
If you aren’t sure how to put a complaints procedure in place, get in touch. We can guide you through what you need to do to help make customer complaints easy to resolve and once-only occurrences.