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Careers Consultancy Making Good The Bad And The Ugly When It Comes to Complaints
Careers Consultancy Making Good The Bad And The Ugly When It Comes to Complaints | Making Good The Bad And The Ugly When It Comes to Complaints |
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By David Abingdon, CEO of The Alchemy Network... Dealing with complaints is never easy – especially if you have a sneaky feeling they are trying it on or after a bit of a freebie. But did you know that 90 per cent of customers who have a bad experience with a company never complain at all? They just never come back, going away quietly. You never know what went wrong—so you never have the chance to make amends.How do you find these silent complainers who, by the way, are unlikely to be quite so silent to their friends, family and contacts and will be a long way from giving you positive endorsement? More importantly for you, how do you transform their experience into a positive one? Instead of waiting for the customer to come to you with a complaint, try going to them first to verify their experience with your company and check on their level of happiness. Call them and ask for feedback. Call each and every customer, or at least a large enough percentage to get a meaningful statistical result. Ask probing questions. Listen carefully to what your customers say. You’ll learn a lot—and it could lead to positive change in the way you do business in the future. Many of the best customer service ideas come straight from the customers’ mouths. When the inevitable happens, and a customer is angry or disappointed, it is actually a great opportunity to make that customer a customer for life. Resolve whatever the problem is in the customer’s favour. Give their money back, fix the problem, replace the item—then go the extra mile with a discount or incentive for next time. Even if the complaint seems unreasonable or invalid, bite the bullet and do what is necessary to satisfy them. This doesn’t mean being a pushover, and most customers are reasonable people who will not take undue advantage of generous customer service policies. Also, we live in a world of instant gratification, so the best response is going to be the quickest. How long do you like to be kept waiting for service at a restaurant? That kind of “long wait” irritation can apply to any business—make your wait times the absolute minimum. How fast are your competitors? Perhaps find out—and make sure you beat them. And even you try everything and it’s still not enough, the advantages in building your list of satisfied repeat customers will far outweigh the one complainer who will never be quite satisfied. www.alchemyopportunity.co.uk |
