Customer complaints are a reality of running any business. While receiving negative feedback is never going to be a pleasant experience, taking steps to handle it properly is key to making business-wide improvements and holding onto your customers.
When approached with an open mind, customer complaints are actually an opportunity to improve your customer experience and boost your business.
In the best-case scenario, your customer may even have a more positive view of your business after a complaint is resolved than before they even had an issue.
In this article, you’ll learn where and why customers are most likely to complain, how you should handle customer complaints, and how to best support your employees.
Customer complaints demonstrate that there’s a mismatch between the product or service delivered and the customer’s initial expectations.
When complaints are one-off occurrences or mistakes, they can be interpreted as negative feedback and the relationship between the business and customer can usually be salvaged. When they’re consistent trends they need to be addressed at a more fundamental level, which we’ll cover later in this guide.
This conflict in expectations and results can be down to several different reasons:
Here’s an example of a complaint regarding a late food delivery made by a local pizza store:
This customer seems to have mismatched expectations with the service on offer which could probably have been resolved with clearer communication at the start:
This customer understood from the website that this pest control business offered a bed bug sniffing dog and was disappointed when the reality of the service was different:
In this situation, it would be best for someone from the business to contact the dissatisfied customer and provide a solution:
Depending on your business model and location, customers may have multiple options for lodging a complaint. Customer feedback can appear in two different ways, public and private. Naturally, if you’re providing channels for private negative feedback you’re more likely to be able to handle these issues outside of the public eye.
Here are some of the top ways customers usually choose to complain:
Take a look at this negative Google review of a florist business:
Take a look at this Facebook comment left by a customer of Ikea:
Regardless of industry, all businesses receive customer complaints at some point. Whether it’s as a result of a mistake made or due to an obstacle your customers have hit, there are certain scenarios that tend to provoke customer complaints.
Having an awareness of what your customers typically complain about will not only help you improve your business’s offering but also help your employees prepare for handling common complaints.
Making an effort to consistently collect feedback from customers will allow you to stay on top of common complaints so you can improve your business and set your employees up for success in handling those complaints as they appear.
Customers appreciate efficient customer service. Whether you run a restaurant or a plumbing business, customers like to feel that their time is respected. People live busy lives and can’t afford to waste time waiting in lines or on the phone.
Long wait times indicate that your business doesn’t prioritize customer experience and that you may not have enough staff members to efficiently deal with your customers.
While an out-of-stock product or fully-booked service is usually an indication that your business is doing something right, customers can grow impatient and frustrated if there’s no availability for a long time.
Customers may keep calling and emailing your business for updates about these unavailable services and products. Ultimately they may leave you negative feedback either online or in-person.
When products are sold damaged or they break shortly after purchase, you can expect customers to complain.
For instance, if you run a local organic fresh fruit and vegetable shop, and a customer purchases bruised oranges, you can expect them to complain.
Take a look at this complaint about expired produce that’s been published on Google for the world to see:
Alternatively, if you run a catering company and the team shows up half an hour late to a birthday party, you can bet that the customer will be unhappy and complain to the lead organizer.
If a customer has already complained about unsatisfactory service or a poor product, they’ll expect some sort of resolution within the days and weeks after the initial complaint.
Take a look at this customer’s frustration at never receiving a resolution, ultimately they took their business elsewhere to a competitor: :
When customers receive a satisfactory solution they’re more likely to feel positive about your business overall. But when customers lodge a legitimate complaint and they don’t receive any kind of suitable solution, they may feel doubly frustrated and lodge a second complaint.
Customers who have time-sensitive requests or complaints may feel anxious about you finding a solution and will want consistent updates.
Other customers may be more patient though and not expect a regular stream of communication. The best policy is for the staff member who’s handling the complaint to be upfront about expected response times and then stick to them. No follow-up is always going to be unacceptable. When a follow-up doesn’t happen, it could be a result of a few occurrences:
If your business can understand the cause of the problem, resolve the issue, and effectively communicate to the customer throughout, you may be able to turn complaining customers into loyal advocates of your brand.
If a customer needs to share negative feedback about your product or service, having to bend over backward to the business’s complaint procedure will only further annoy an already agitated customer.
To help create a solid customer experience, customers need to feel that the business cares about their thoughts. When customers complain, it should be easy for them to share their honest opinions and thoughts with a business.
Businesses need to provide customers with multiple avenues for them to share their thoughts.
You could encourage customers to share their thoughts by:
Here’s an example of helping customers easily leave feedback on a business website:
Proactively asking your customers for honest feedback is a great way of preventing complaints from escalating. Sending out customer satisfaction surveys at regular intervals is one way of checking in with your customers and seeing how they feel about your business.
Customer complaints provide useful insights into what may not be working for your business. When customers complain, ask valid questions to dig deeper into what caused the issue in the first place.
When registering a complaint, consider asking customers the following questions:
Customer complaints are also a good time for some self-reflection.
Asking the right questions will help you uncover the root of the problem and how you might be able to resolve it. Depending on how your business is structured, you may choose a designated team member to handle complaints and uncover insights. For instance, in a local grocery store, it may make sense for the team manager to take charge of customer complaints.
Alternatively, if you run a pest control service, it may be best for the bookings manager to handle customer complaints since they may have the most customer contact. Your bookings manager or receptionist would then need to report these insights to the manager or owner on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Acceptable response times depend on the nature of the complaint. Customers who leave negative feedback about your restaurant’s new seasonal menu may not mind if you take all day to respond.
But a customer who calls to complain about a plumber who was meant to show up 5 hours ago is going to be more than frustrated if you take a week to respond.
Take a look at this prompt same-day review response:
Taking time to regularly monitor your customer complaints is important to ensure you don’t miss one. Set up GatherUp’s customer activity dashboard to stay on top of customer feedback and better manage customer experience. You could set up notifications for negative feedback so you don’t risk missing it.
Once you’ve found the cause of the customer complaint, identified a suitable solution, and proposed that solution to the customer, make you follow up to see if you successfully solved their problem.
This response to a negative review identifies an opportunity to provide a solution in the form of a refund:
Customers appreciate businesses that care about their experience and their overall satisfaction.
You can then follow up with customers by:
When you receive a complaint, it’s important to record the type of complaint and who it came from.
The complaint could come from:
If you receive multiple complaints about the same issue from a similar type of customer point, then it’s clear there’s a recurring problem.
It’s important to identify high-volume complaints as these can point to dominant issues throughout your business.
Using GatherUp’s advanced reporting features you could filter, sort, customize and compare different complaints, and feedback. When you correctly identify repeat complaints and take steps to change the narrative, it’ll become easier to resolve recurring issues.
Business managers need to provide employees with proper guidance to ensure they feel well equipped and empowered to effectively resolve complaints on the business’s behalf.
Clear guidance and policies will also help ensure each customer complaint receives a standardized level of attention and those complaints are recorded properly.
Write a set of guidelines that clearly outline how employees should deal with customer complaints. It’s a good idea to make the document as comprehensive as possible so employees feel confident in a range of different situations.
As we mentioned earlier, if you’re consistently collecting feedback, you should be familiar with common customer complaints and have a specific way for your employees to be able to handle them. That way, they’ll understand what’s expected of them as the complaints arise.
Try to provide guidance on how they should react, how to escalate the complaint, and provide possible solutions.
Make sure the complaint-handling document is circulated throughout your business and easily accessible to all staff members. After reading the document, team members should hopefully feel confident making their own judgment calls and handling different situations.
In-person or virtual training sessions are an interactive way of helping employees feel confident in handling complaints. You could try incorporating role-play sessions where you show employees the potential set of complaints that customers could present.
Handling customer complaints is one of the more challenging aspects of working in a customer-facing role. Remember to check in on your employees on a quarterly basis to see how they’re holding up in these situations. If your employees don’t feel well-equipped, it’s important that steps are taken at a managerial level to provide more tools and training sessions.
Customer complaints are a reality of running a business. When handled correctly though they’re an opportunity to improve customer experience and enhance your business’s offering.
Make it a priority to work on the issues customers complain about, and proactively improve the way your business deals with negative feedback. Try implementing a few of our suggestions for handling complaints and see how you can retain more loyal customers.
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