By Stephen Lynch
At some point you will have to deal with an upset customer. Your business execution challenge is to handle each situation in a way that leaves the customer thinking you are a great company to deal with, and if you handle the issue really well – hopefully they will become a passionate advocate for your brand.
Many customers don’t even bother to complain. They simply leave and buy from your competitors. Research suggests up to 80 percent of customers who leave a business and buy from a competitor were in fact “satisfied” with the original company.
So obviously “customer satisfaction” is not enough. Satisfaction is merely table stakes. It does not prevent a customer from leaving. You need to positively delight your customers if you want to earn their loyalty.
Counter intuitively, studies have shown that your ability to effectively deal with customer complaints provides a great opportunity to turn dissatisfied customers into an active promoters of your business.
Here are our recommendations for handling customer complaints:
Listen carefully to what the customer has to say and let them finish
Don’t get defensive. The customer is not attacking you personally; they have a problem and are upset. Repeat back what you are hearing to show that you have listened to them.
Ask questions in a caring, concerned manner
The more information you can get from the customer, the better you will understand their perspective. Ask questions to clarify the problem. Ask questions to show that you care.
Put yourself in their shoes
Your goal is to solve their problem, not to argue with them to prove that the company is right and they are wrong. They may indeed be wrong, but the customer needs to feel that you are on their side, and that you empathise with them.
Apologise without blaming
When a customer senses that you are sincerely sorry, it usually diffuses the situation. Don’t blame another person or department, or make excuses. Just say, “I’m sorry about that.”
Ask the customer, “What would be an acceptable solution to you?”
Whether or not the customer knows what a good solution would be, propose one or more solutions to alleviate their pain. Become a partner with the customer in solving the problem.
Solve the problem, or find someone who can solve it. Quickly!
Research indicates that customers prefer the person they are speaking with to be able to solve their problem. Therefore, managers must delegate the authority and accountability for problem solving to staff working at the customer interface.
When complaints are moved up the chain of command, they become more expensive to handle and only add to the customer’s frustration. The customer fears that some manager who does not empathise with their situation will make a decision against them based on some “company policy”.
Give your clientfacing team members the authority to take an agreed range of remedial actions quickly and decisively – on the spot. You want the customer to say “Wow – thank you”.
Suggestion
Book a meeting with your front line team this week to discuss customer complaint scenarios and agree what remedial actions can be taken by the team member in each scenario.
