Top 10 Tips on How to Handle Customer Complaints

Do you know US businesses lose $62 billion every year due to bad customer experience? There is a saying in the business world is that ‘’Customers are the bloodline of any business’’. Your business will never sustain if your customers are not happy with your service. On average, an unhappy customer shares their experience with up to 15 other people. And the chain goes on, and this will negatively affect the company’s brand image. 

Customer complaints are unavoidable for any business, and every company has to deal with its unhappy customers. But how well you handle their complaints is the biggest challenge, so that the customers feel they are valuable. 

With this article, you will have a broad idea of handling customer complaints and building a better relationship with your customers. 

What are customer complaints? 

Whenever a customer feels dissatisfied with a company’s service, they file a complaint about that; this action is called a customer complaint. Customer complaints show that there is a communication gap between the customer and the brand. Customers can raise complaints in various ways, like by calling customer complaint numbers, etc. There are different types of customer complaints; they can be related to improper communication, bad service quality, and internal processes. 

How will handling customer complaints effectively affect any business? 

Around 87% of customers prefer brands with a good reputation. You can enhance your brand’s reputation by listening to your customers’ problems carefully and try to solve them as soon as possible. In most cases, brands end up losing customers due to their poor service quality. With good customer service, brands can retain customers who are about to leave their service. This will help in building a good relationship between customers and brands. 

Simple tips on how to handle customer complaints 

As mentioned above, customer satisfaction is the most important aspect of building a good brand value. There are simple tips that can help you handle customer complaints. 

1. Active listening to customer’s issue

Active listening helps to build a mutual understanding between the customer and your company. Sometimes, customers’ issues might be simple and minor issues for you, but you need to listen to them carefully. You must make the customer feel comfortable and give them their time to calm down.

2. Always stay calm

It is very difficult to stay calm while listening to customer’s complaints. You need to their problems first and try to make them understand that you are there for assistance. This will customers calm down and share their issues. Customer complaints should never be taken as a personal attack; you need first to understand their point of view. Try not to lose your cool and yell at the customers as this will make a bad impression on you and your company. 

3. Be kind to your customers

Always take the customer complaints positively, not negatively, as their complaints will help you improve your service. You need to tell your customers that you appreciate their effort to reach you; this will make them understand that you care about their problems. When a customer feels that you care about them and their issues, they will even cooperate with you in finding a solution to the problem caused. 

4. Acknowledge the customer’s issues

It is a good practice to acknowledge the customer’s issue and repeat it back to them after listening to them. This will make the customer feel that you were listening to their concerns. But acknowledging the issue does not mean that you are admitting what the customer is saying; it only means that you understand their concern and are available to resolve the issue. This will help you build a mutual understanding between you and your customer. 

5. Apologize and say thank you

Whenever you are listening to any customer’s issues, you need to apologize for the inconvenience caused to them. And apologizing does not mean that you are taking the blame for the customer’s bad experience. After apologizing, be thankful to the customer for reaching to you, which implies that you are trying to resolve the issue and improve your service. This practice will help customers to build trust in you. 

6. Ask questions for clarification

After listening to the customer’s problem and making them understand that you are there to assist, you need to take the initiative to ask questions to get more information about the issue. When the customer has built trust in you, they will be more willing to share the problem with you. Make sure that you don’t ask the same questions repeatedly, as this will annoy the customer, and they will feel that you were not listening to them.

7. Speed up the solving procedure

Once you gather all the valuable information about the problem, you need to find a reasonable solution quickly. The faster you find a solution, the happier the customer will be. It is important to follow all the company’s guidelines, but you also need to take an extra step to solve your customer’s problem. Try to impress the customer by offering them discounts or gift cards. And, never offer any solution you can’t follow; this will only make the customer angry and upset. 

10. Follow up with the customer

Contacting your frustrated customer after finding a solution to their problem is always a hard thing to do. But, this will let the customer know that you are committed to solving their problem, and their issue is the top priority for you. During the follow-up, apologize again for the inconvenience caused to the customer and assure them that the situation has been resolved. 

11. Document customer’s response

Customer complaints always contain information about the flaws in your products and services. Documenting the customer’s conversation will help you improve your product quality. You can go through the documentation to find the problem and can share these issues with the concerned team to solve the issue. This will help you tackle the problem and improve your customer service. 

12. Get regular feedback from customers

Feedbacks always help you improve your customer service, business strategy, and skills. Whether feedback is positive or negative, you need to acknowledge them and discuss them with your team to improve. Always provide ways for customers to give feedback; you can ask your customers to send feedback through emails, letters, and other methods. 

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction is the most important thing for brands to maintain a good reputation. Customer complaints are always a blessing in disguise. These complaints will give a proper insight into the issues and problems you are having with your products and improve them in the right direction. With better customer service, you can always build a good reputation for your brand and convert your customers into your promoter.