10 Tips for Dealing with Customer Complaints

Dealing with customer complaints will stress out the staff and the management if not handled efficiently and effectively. Not every customer agrees with filing a complaint, especially escalating one to the higher authorities since there are some issues which can be dealt by a simple talk and negotiation. Nonetheless, here are some tips which a management and a company may consider doing whenever a particular customer files a complaint:

• Accept and listen. The first thing that a customer may do is rant about how unsatisfied he is with the service and products that your company provided. These rants may be subjected under an employee complaint if he is specifying a particular service, or maybe it is a Product Complaint if he was unhappy with the product that he purchased from the company. However, regardless of the customer’s rants, you, as a good employee and staff must veer your full attention to his words and actions.

• Emotions away. To be a professional employee or service provider, you must set out your emotions away from handling customer and client complaints to assure that your personal thoughts will not be a hindrance in finding a solution. In the event that the client or customer had been in an emotional battle of anger and distrust against the company, and he had been hitting on your ego and pride, the thing that you must do is breathe. By focusing on breathing, you can retain a calm atmosphere and show the customer that you are not personally hurt by his words.

• Display gratitude. Customer complaints are similar to customer feedback, however, complaints focus on negative thoughts and words from the complainant compared to a feedback which deals with the positive remarks of the user. As an employee, you should thank the customer that he was able to reach out to the management about the issue rather than spreading violent words online and not looking for a settlement with the company.

• Show a pleasing attitude. Your attitude must portray your willingness to solve the issue and not being irritated by the words of the customer. By showing your interest in dealing with the complaint, the customer will most likely reciprocate the respect that you are presenting to him.

• Supply a solution. To do this, you must listen to the suggestions and expectations of the customer so you will have an idea about the resolution and how to successfully handle the customer. Planning a solution is similar to drafting a corrective action since it focuses on an action plan that must be done in order to supply a resolution and prevent further issues in the future.

• Speak out. It is not only the customer or the complainant who has all the rights to speak in a deliberation for attaining a solution, but also you, as an employee and the members of the management who are connected with the customer’s complaints. Honestly tell the customer what you think would be best for his issues and what process should he be undertaking. However, be mindful of your honesty as the words that you’ll use may cause another set of issues in the mind of the complainant.

Speaking your thoughts will be more effective if these will be in writing such as using an employee suggestion form. This will state your concerns, the needed resources, and your desired outputs or benefits for the suggestions. After filling out the form, present this to the management and let the higher personnel create a way of how they can mandate and send out your suggestions to the customer.

• Provide choices and offers. if there is less to zero ways of resolving the problem and meeting the expectation of the customer, think of possible discounts and purchases that you may offer to him. Nonetheless, you should be sure that the offers are allowed by the management and that you are not conducting an illegal transaction. You might as well lay down a purchase offer document in front of the customer to aid him in choosing and deciding whether or not to bite into your solutions.

• Collect documentation. Paperwork such as purchase receipt forms and invoices are vital in solving an issue pertaining to transactions and purchases. This is due to the reason that these papers serve as proofs that the transaction happened and the customer is indeed a buyer or client of the company. When collecting these documents, you must view the dates stated on the forms and assure that both of the dates match into one another. The Receipt Form will also indicate the name of the staff who assisted the customer and the list of products that he was able to purchase.

• Follow up. Gather the contact information of the customer to allow your company in providing a follow up when everything has been settled. Not only are you going to do a follow up with the customer, but also you must regularly check if there are any issues related to the recent case or complaint that you have solved. In this way, escalating issues to the management will be minimized since you will know what particular steps you must take to cater the complainant’s requests.

• Track down and assess. Know the frequency of the issue in your company whether this has been happening for some time, in an interval, or a few instances only. With the use of a complaint tracking form, you will see the number of complaints being reported and the names of the people who have successfully dealt with the complaints. Weekly assessments must also be observed to coordinate with the development of the tracker.

These ten tips may be simple enough to comprehend and understand, however, in the field of dealing with customer complaints, these will serve a great use and purpose to liven up the process of attaining a complaint resolution. Nonetheless, the staff, employees, and the company management must do a regular business evaluation to know what areas they will need to improve in order to lessen the numbers of complaint reports in their company.