Getting bad reviews and complaints from your customers is not all that bad if you know how to handle them. Receiving such feedback might even be good for your business even if unaddressed negative reviews may lose you a few potential such customers at first. They are likely to share their complaints with you and other people, but there is a bright side to this. You can use the customer complaint to detect a problem with your product, service, internal operations or employees, investigate that problem, and improve it to prevent more complaints.
Research shows that customers who complained but are correctly handled can become loyal customers, or better, brand advocates.
Customer Service dealing with complaints
If your ultimate goal is to ensure end user satisfaction, be prepared to deal with not only happy customers but less-than-happy ones as well. But it is what you do with negative feedback that can give you an edge over the competition. Before you take action, though, make sure to ask yourself the following questions to help you decide what to do with each complaint:
- Has the subject of the complaint happened before?
- How many times has the same complaint been raised?
- Can you see a pattern with the complaint?
- Has the same customer made the same complaint?
If several customers have complained about the same issue, make sure to investigate it, and resolve or improve the problem. While you are in the process of addressing the issue and complaints are still coming in, you can address the customers by sending them an email detailing what you are doing to resolve it.
By facing the complaints and dealing with them, you can set off a continuous cycle of improvement for your business. At times like these, even a single call to a complaining customer can make them feel heard and taken seriously, putting them at ease that you are doing something to make things better for them.
Benefits of Handling Customer Complaints
The way you deal with customer complaints can either help you succeed or doom you to failure in this heavily competitive world of business. Prompt handling of negative feedback can help your business in the following ways.
Here are the benefits of customer complaints when correctly handled:
- Improve brand image. When you show your customers that you listen and take their complaints seriously by offering them a solution quickly, it boosts your reputation. Customers love doing business with companies with a good brand image.
- Boost customer retention. Addressing complaints can help you retain your customers, which can save you a lot of money in the long run. It costs less to hold on to your existing customers than to attract new ones.
- Increase customer satisfaction. You will know which among your customers are happy or not with your service by carefully monitoring their feedback across all social media platforms and means of communication. If you resolve complaints and the issue behind those complaints, you can turn negative feedback into positive ones.
- Determine areas that need improvement. Listening to complaints can help you identify problematic areas and improve them to ensure an excellent customer experience in the future.
Customer complaints can help propel you to success in providing customer service depending on how you handle them. Take them as the tool that you can use to improve your product or service. Monitor customer feedback, listen to customers’ complaints, empathize with them, give them quick solutions, keep them in the loop, and make sure to follow up with them.
