How can you handle complaints

Most small businesses will receive complaints at one stage or another. But it's how you deal with them that matters.

We sat down with CustomerSure, a customer feedback business application, to hear their insights about turning a customer complaint into a positive experience.

Opportunity for improvement When your small business receives a complaint, the natural reaction is for you, as business owner, to feel defensive. Why you should embrace complaints The most successful, customer-focused companies embrace complaints — because complaints are unsolicited feedback. Understand the customer's perspective It's common for complaints to be made due to growing frustration. This is the typical experience most complaining customers go through: They approach you with a request.

They see no movement to resolve the issue. They complain. Resolve the issue to the customer's satisfaction You need to make sure a customer's issue is resolved properly.

Here are six tips to help you do that: Talk to the customer Sending standard letters or emails might work in some cases. But often you can achieve more, faster, with a phone call. This will help you properly understand their complaint. It'll also feel more personal to the customer, and reduce the risk of them misunderstanding the tone of your response. Find out what they want You might have an idea of what it takes to resolve the complaint. Your customer's idea might be different.

Ask them what they want and listen carefully to the response. You might not be able to grant every wish, but perhaps you can meet them halfway. Ask about wider issues Is the customer happy generally with your service or product? What other feedback can they give that might be useful? Asking them questions like this will help them feel engaged and valued. Give something back You might want to do more than just solve the customer's problem.

You could go further — maybe offer them a discount on their next bill, or send them a voucher for your products or services. This small additional cost will help you retain them as a customer, and could pay for itself many times over. Confirm your solution Go through the details of your proposed solution on the phone, then follow up by email or letter.

Make sure your agreement is fully understood on both sides. Your customer will feel engaged and it should reduce the risk of disputes and misunderstandings later. Keeping a complaining customer should be the top priority, and at these cost ratios you can afford to be generous in your time and effort.

To find out more, see our FAQs. S Find out more. How Richard Branson handles customer complaints. Dealing with bad publicity - checklist.

With the complaints documented, you can bring them up in monthly and annual meetings to seek advice on how to tackle the issue. Contacting your angry customer after finding a solution for them might be the last thing you want to do, but after all that hard work, following up with your customer is the icing on the cake for them.

This is a nice way to show that you really intend to help out and solve the experience problem that led to the complaint. You can attach a face to conversations easily enough with video conferencing apps like Zoom or Skype. Customer complaints are usually rooted in legitimate problems. Make sure you actually follow through with your promise, though.

Apps like Notifications make it a breeze to notify customers about stock level changes, individual purchases, and more. They call or email you and you never respond. Sometimes all it takes is one ignored message or email and you suddenly have an angry customer.

We are all human after all. Apologize, then handle the issue right then and there. Try to avoid putting the problem off any longer. Customer service issues. If you carry a product or offer a service, both you and your employees are expected to be the experts.

Make sure your employees are well-acquainted with your products and services, as well as trained in customer service. If the above does happen to you, you can assure your customer that customer service reps are receiving training. Plus, offer to send additional information about the product. And be sure to address these kinds of issues with the employee as well. Or, due to misunderstanding how to use the product, they simply have a lack of knowledge.

You can handle this by replacing or refunding the dysfunctional product. Find out what the customer needs, then help them accomplish that with the chosen item or service. Explainer videos work great for this purpose. With the many social channels and forums available on the internet, there are a lot of opportunities and platforms for customers to share feedback on.

Complaints are best resolved as soon as possible. Make responding to them a priority. Here, the team can see immediately which emails are from customers who need help right away. Start in minutes with a free trial. There are a couple of ways to do this:. In some cases, it may even be worth reaching back out to the customer after a few days have passed to make sure that everything is resolved.

You may also want to consider monitoring any satisfaction ratings you receive on the conversation in your customer service software. Whatever system you use, the key is to make it easy to capture meaningful complaints and track the volume of customers who are bringing up similar or identical issues. By rehearsing potential objections ahead of time, you can prepare before real-life negative interactions occur.

Before launching a new product or feature, think about things that might attract polarizing opinions. This has three purposes:. How do you keep your head up amongst that level of negativity?