The reaction to this statement during our Customer Experience Training workshop with front line teams, is usually overwhelmingly one of disbelieve, followed by disagreement. How could a complaint from a customer be anything but a negative experience?
It may seem a bit of a paradox, but the answer is simple: unless we get feedback from our customers, how do we know how well we are doing? In the same way a team member needs feedback from their manager, so that they know how well they are doing or where there is a need for improvement, we all need to know where we are going wrong and what areas of improvement we need to focus on. The best way to get this information is to listen to our customers’ comments and complaints, take them seriously and do something about them.
As a business, we need to not look at a complaint as an annoyance that we disregard, but as an opportunity to learn, rectify our processes and retrain our teams where needed; this will help ensure that we are listening to our customer feedback and acting on it quickly, so that the customer making the complaint feels valued and does not leave us to eat elsewhere, for example.
It is worth looking at customer service statistics such as the below one, to remind ourselves that a complaint is indeed a gift.
A study by 1st Financial Training Services found that ‘96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back.’
It also means that if customers don’t tell us there is a problem, they have stopped caring. They have given up on us and stopped complaining because they think that nothing will ever get done about it. In fact, one could argue that the lack of complaints is definitely a sign of a customer relationship in decline.
So, how should we respond to a customer coming to us with a complaint?
People often feel defensive and give excuses as a response, which is unhelpful to the customer and is actually counterproductive. Nobody likes to receive complaints, but although at times difficult, we need to remember not to take complaints in a personal way; they are simply customers telling us that they still care enough to let us know there is a problem.
Valentines Learning 4 steps to handling complaints confidently and effectively
We explore the handling of complaints in our Customer Experience Training workshop for front line teams, but let’s briefly look at the steps:
- Thank you – We need to view complaints from a different angle, and one way is to look at them as gifts. Just like when we receive a gift, we say thank you; receiving a complaint is our chance to say “thank you” to the customer, for letting us know that there was a problem. For instance, you could say ‘thank you for bringing the issue to our attention’.
- Sorry – But thanking them is not enough; we need to apologise to the customer in a sincere manner. You could simply say that you apologise for the issue, or ‘I am so sorry that there was a problem with your meal’ for example.
- Ownership – We now have to clearly communicate to the customer that we take their complaint seriously and that we are going to do something about it, and what.
- Satisfaction – Finally, it is essential we check that the customer is happy with the solution we are proposing, to ensure full customer satisfaction.
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In order to be able to handle a customer complaint effectively and with confidence, it is essential that you give more responsibility to your teams, so that they feel empowered to make decisions. They also need to be given clear guidelines so they know what they are able to do within given boundaries.
If you need support with empowering your teams and training them, or if your teams need to improve on specific skills in customer experience, contact us now to see how we can help.
