An organised strategy for dealing with complaints is an easy way to improve your customer service. You may think that customer service is an organic thing. That responses should be tailored to a specific situation. While that’s true to a certain extent, parts of the process work better if standards and processes exist.
It’s best if you tailor your customer service to each specific customer in terms of tone, methods and exact phrasing. However, a certain amount of preparation allows for a more consistent customer experience. It also gives staff a strong grounding in the customer service ethic of the company.
For example, whether you offer products or services, having set responses to problems helps in a number of ways:
It will mean your responses aren’t based on how much you like that particular customer.
After all, there will be customers you feel like telling to get lost. And others that complain so kindly you want to replace the product and give them a freebie. Creating complaints and returns policies in advance allows you to provide a consistent response. Instead of responding in a way that’s influenced by emotion.
It will give staff the ability to respond to confidently deal with problems on their own.
If you don’t have a policy, staff will have to bring every issue to your attention or make up responses to problems as they occur. Either method is likely to cause problems in the long run.
It will make responding to problems a quicker, simpler process.
The quicker a problem is solved, or at least a solution is offered, the better the client experience. If your clients perceive you as responding quickly to problems, it will increase their confidence to spend money with you in the future.
It’s not the end of the road.
Whether you have a set response to problems or not, once you’ve made the initial offer to a dissatisfied customer, it doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate further to give a solution more suited to their needs. It doesn’t even mean you can’t walk away further down the track if the client won’t be satisfied with anything you offer.
The types of responses you should look at having are:
- Have an “initial complaint” form where things such as date & time received, contact name, phone number, email address, preferred contact method, exact details of problems can be recorded.
- Find out the issues & if possible get them in writing
- Don’t take responsibility, but be empathetic
- Give the client an idea of what happens next and how long it should take. i.e.: I’ll pass this to my supervisor and they’ll contact you tomorrow/this week/ within 24 hours etc. We’ll refund the money within # days, etc. Make sure to follow up within these time frames. At the very least you should be contacting them to say: “Sorry, this is taking longer than we thought, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible”
- Guidelines for whether to repair or replace.
- Policy on issues with service. This should include a note to decide on the extent of services with the client beforehand. As well as what lengths you will take to rectify any problems.
Having a clear policy on how to handle problems helps deal with any issues as they arise. And can make it easier to handle issues without emotions or ego becoming involved. Hopefully, you’ll never need to refer to it, but chances are that at some point you will.
If you’d like some more ideas, check out my previous Customer Service posts
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