8 Steps to Extinguish Customer Complaints

Customer complaints are common in businesses as everyone knows that not all customer can be pleased. So it is very important that management within a business trains their employees to actually handle these complaints in the event that they receive them. Because as one knows, if a customer’s complaint is ignored then there’s a good chance you will never see that customer again.

Customers are what keeps businesses going. The more customers there are then the better it is for the business. However, more customers can mean more problems and more problems mean more complaints for the employees to deal with. So as an employee, you are going to have to learn how to deal with customer complaints in an efficient and professional manner.

The 8 Ways on How to Handle Customer Complaints

Aiming for customer satisfaction is always a must, but employees will always come across those customers that would offer solutions that might be too impossible to deliver. So no matter what issue an employee encounters, one must always take note of these rules when trying to deal with customers and their issues:

• Always listen to what your customer has to say. This is very important as you will need to figure out what is causing your customer to be upset. Is it a service complaint? What about the service does your customer have an issue with? What do your customers want as compensation? You are going to have learn to listen to know all of that.

• Understand your customer. Try to look at things from the customer’s perspective and think about how they feel about the problem. Doing so can help you understand whether or not the complaint is justifiable.

• Only escalate the problem to your manager if you know you cannot handle the problem. There are different types of complaints that customers can make that not every employee is meant to handle. Should that happen, you will have to inform the customer that his or her problem is being escalated to the manager where hopefully things can be resolved.

• Never fight with the customer. Even when you know that the customer is completely wrong, it is always best not to engage in a manner that could ruin the image of the company that you are working for. Arguing with the customer will only make the customer more angry and frustrated, which will make things even harder to deal with. So calmly defend the policies of your company, and do what you can to make sure that things do not escalate into an out of control argument.

• Provide the solution to the problem when you can. Provide a solution that will satisfy your customer, even if it isn’t the solution that the customer proposed. If the customer cannot be pleased no matter what, then the employee must incorporate resolve.

• If you cannot please the customer, then resolve the issue by offering your best offered solution and nothing more. Customers will always try to get what they want and will often ignore company policy. Stand your ground and offer only what you can.

• Follow up with the customer regarding the status of the complaint. Whether things were resolved or not, you are going to have to send something like an e-mail which shows the details of how you tried resolving the issue.

• Use the complaints as an opportunity to learn about the flaws in your company’s system. Document these complaints to keep track of them. Doing so can help you out when similar problems occur in the future. This way, you already know what to do to solve certain problems should they arise.

Why Customer Complaints Are Important to Every Company

Although it bad to receive complaints from your customers, one must also take note that these complaints do not always have to be a bad thing. Here are a couple of reasons as to why that is:

• It can help you find areas within a company’s services that needs serious improvement. With the help of the customer, you can identify if you have a product that needs immediately looking into, if your systems need updating, or if there are certain staff members that might need more training.

• Complaint reports can help you identify any problems with your company’s policies and procedures. These people can point out current policies that might be very inconvenient, or if there are parts that are too hard to comprehend or unnecessary.

• It serves as a great way to improve communication with your customer. When the customer willingly points out what your problems are, then it shows that the person wishes to improve your business by giving out details on what is missing, what is out of date, or what isn’t needed.

• It provides great experience to employees that need to handle them. Say that one of your employee receives a product complaint, this gives the employee the opportunity to understand how to deal with the customer as well as educating the employee on what the customers are experiencing, as well as what they are expecting.

• The complaints can serve as a catalyst for change and improvement within the business. If a manager were to receive multiple complaint forms regarding how employees are treating the customers, then decisions can be made that could be very beneficial to both the business and the customers.

• Customer complaints may present new opportunities to every business. By having certain issues being pointed out, management might be able to do certain actions that could increase revenue and reduce service costs all while being able to solve the problem the customers are facing.

• The complaints can help you gain valuable information regarding your competition. If managers receive customer feedback which contains information regarding how other companies are handling a certain problem, this will give managers ideas about better ways to handle them. Doing so can help show customers that they are far superior to their competition when it comes to trying to listening, understanding, changing, and improving what their customers want.

For those that would like to know more about other types of complaints and the forms used to make them, then we have complaint forms in PDF form available here on our site.