By Melinda Collins
It starts with a fleeting visit and can end with just as much haste — and be a complete disaster. In the world of customer loyalty, the reputation you have worked so hard to uphold can be tarnished almost as quickly as you can say, “the money back guarantee doesn’t apply in this case”.
And adding potential insult to injury is Facebook, Twitter and other social websites (vehicles of freely accessible positive promotion), which can work against you just as freely and easily.
The lesson to learn is — viewing the communication accessibility of the internet through a rose coloured perspective won’t do you any favours in the customer complaints realm. While laws like the Defamation Act 1996 work to protect businesses from having reputations tarnished by disgruntled customers, the free and uninhibited world of cyberspace has dressed personal opinions in a veil of anonymity and called it freedom of speech.
The ease at which the internet allows dissatisfied customers to yell from their online soapbox means it’s easy to hold a corporate grudge, and with a few keystrokes, inflict a good amount of damage.
But does it matter? There are, after all, millions more consumer fish in the corporate sea.
Well it does, and the longer the customer’s association with your business, the more it matters. Research shows that the stronger the relationship, the stronger the grudge when the relationship sours.
Researchers Yany Gregoire, Thomas Tripp and Renaud Legoux delved into the phenomena of relationship strength on customer revenge and avoidance in the Journal of Marketing last year. The results make for interesting reading.
They discovered a company’s best customers have the longest unfavourable reactions, their wish for revenge dissipates more slowly and their avoidance increases more rapidly than that of customers with weak relationships.
On the bright side, they discovered that customers with stronger relationships are more amenable to even a modest level of recovery attempt and not necessarily a more expensive attempt. Customers of low relationship quality in the study, on the other hand, required expensive, high recovery attempts.
With 25 years of successful managerial experience, Deborah Law-Carruthers has developed and presented a variety of customer service workshops. The customer service afficionado was involved with the advisory panel for the design of the retail unit standards for NZQA and a judge for the NZ Retail Association Top Shop awards. She now facilitates and presents Managing Customer Complaints, an EMA course designed to assist businesses in dealing with the unfortunate reality of disgruntled customers.
When it comes to the commercial battlefield, Law-Carruthers says it’s important not to go in all guns blazing. You may save the present sale, but lose the life value of the customer. “Businesses forget the long term effect and deal too much in the now. There are also businesses that do not use these experiences as opportunities to see how they could improve or review a policy that is not ‘customer friendly’.”
Customer complaints must be appropriately dealt with, or the results can be disastrous. “Customers seem to get frustrated by the lack of information or training that some customer service staff have.
“I also believe that organisations who are making the customer ‘do all the work,’ for example, make the customer ring back because the manager is not available, need to fix that behaviour in their business. All they are doing is adding to the frustration the customer is already experiencing.”
This makes it important to ensure all front line staff are able to efficiently and accurately deal with these situations. “Customers perceive the complaints process to be a difficult one, so anytime we can have informed staff dealing with a complaint who have the authority to offer solutions and send the customer away happy, is a great outcome,” she says.
“While we need to have our standard policies and procedures, such as proof of purchase, one of the best things we can do for a customer is to try and give them a couple of solutions to their problem. Complaints can escalate if you tell them only one thing can be done, take it or leave it. If you tell them you can do ‘A’ or ‘B’ and what would they like, then the customer will feel like they have a choice in the decision making process.”
Customer complaints, she says, can be an important business tool, if used correctly. “The importance of correctly dealing with customer complaints is to keep the customer on your side. It can also be used as a business improvement tool if we look at complaints as an opportunity to do something better, or train our staff in areas they may be lacking,” she says.
“Dealing with complaints efficiently and with a ‘customer focused’ approach can also reduce workplace stress and increase job satisfaction as it creates a better work environment.”
Do …
- Listen and don’t interrupt
- Take notes (but explain to the customer if in a face to face situation why you are doing this)
- Confirm your understanding of the situation back to the customer and ask if there is anything you might have missed or not got right
- Tell the customer what you can do — preferably at least two options. Be focused on dealing with the problem
- Be gracious, polite and apologise.
Don’t …
- Make customers repeat their issue more than once
- Tell the customer what you can’t do
- Make the customer feel like it’s their fault (which it might be, but don’t remind them)
- Don’t forget to apologise.
For more information on the EMA’s Managing Customer Complaints course visit www.ema.co.nz
