How to Handle Customer Complaints – (video)
If you have ever spent more than five minutes working in customer service then you know that a customer complaint is not that far behind. It is just part of the job. It is a necessary evil. You would not have customer service without customer complaints they are going to happen sometimes for the most mundane little thing to something so serious you might have to call the police.
It is true, it happens but well there is no but you have got to deal with it has to get deal with it has to be done properly, it has to get that we dealt with immediately, it has to be dealt with was a sense of urgency.
It truly does because again, it is just that important to the customer just as it is important to the individual that is being complained.
Remember, customer service and customer complaints go together like peanut butter and jelly.
How do you deal with it? Well, we are going to talk about the five things we can do to address these issues and how to address them properly. How to take care of things so that they don’t grow into something bigger and it doesn’t turn your organization to some rascally care less, better still some could not care at all about the customer, only in it for themselves type of organization.
Now we are going to get these things, we are going to work on them and you are going to have to jump on it immediately because when a customer comes up and complains. First off, you have to know how to deal with it and who to hand off the complaint to because you at some point you might have to hand it off to your supervisor. If it is, you they are complaining on then it is going to have to immediately go to your supervisor. Doing this immediately creates a sense of transparency and creates a sense, to the customer, that you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about, and there is a process. It is going to give them an opportunity to feel like a something good is going to come out of this and that is a very good thing.
Now if it is you that gets to handle the customer complaint well, that is all right and welcome to the world of customer service. You know while we’re always taught the customer is always right, sometimes it’s the other way around but this is where you and how you handle these customer complaints can kind of turn that around a little bit.
The first thing you have to do is get the details not just the facts. I am talking the details get them. Get as much detail as possible. It will go a long way in helping to paint a better & larger picture of the entire situation.
Who knows it could just be the day they are having, the customer is having a bad day and decided to take it out on the first person that they ran into in your organization, through no fault of the individual. Then again, it could also be that one of your employees really, truly messed up and how are you going to deal with that but that is for a different time we are still dealing with customer complaints.
Get all sides of the story!
Do not just stick on one side, then just go ahead, and say, “You know what Joe; you really truly messed up because the customer said so.” No, get both sides or as many sides witnesses that there were any get all sides of the story and again that goes a long way to showing everybody not just the customer but the employee being accused that you’re going to be fair and you are going to be impartial because you demand to know everything that happened.
Now that you have everything, the information, continue investigating until the end. Review the transactions. If there is video get the video, if there is tape receipts get the tape receipts. Get everything you can even including video. If your facility has cameras outside get video. If shows how the individual walked in without any problems when they walked in. Did something happen outside the building that caused the individual to become upset? Then look at the employee that is being accused. Video goes a long way. Computer interactions go a long way. Tape receipts they go a long way, as well. Continue investigating until the end and then once you have done so deliver your results.
However, there is one thing you should never ever do or say. It does not matter who you are never do this thing: never promise anything to the customer. Never promise things like “heads are going to roll for this” or “someone will lose their job of this” because you do not know what is happening. It could be your job that could be you that is losing your job, it could be your head is going to roll because you over-promised something; you overstepped your boundaries, especially when you are not in a position to make those kinds of decisions.
Do not promise the customer anything. However, do promise you will look into it and deliver on that. That much they are expecting. You cannot promise anything other than you are going to look into what is going on and if there was a direct violation of company policy then appropriate action will be taken. You could say that but again you are not going to promise things like “heads are going to roll” or that “someone’s going to lose her job”.
As far as anyone knows the customer could be having a bad day, misidentified the employee and they are blaming someone completely different and yet you are going to tell them that that individual is going to lose her job. No. You do not do that. You never ever promise things like that. You can promise that there is going to be a resolution. Again, what if it just turns out all of the evidence points to one thing but the customer’s word points in a different direction, what do you do?
You do not. You bump it up, you send it up the chain of command until there is a resolution. Remember never promise anything especially when you are in a situation where you cannot deliver on that promise. If you do, I guarantee it will make you look bad, it will make the organization look bad and it will prove that customer’s point.
Again, handle all customer complaints swiftly, thoroughly, appropriately and give them the results. Give them an answer even if the answer is no answer. No matter, they need to be addressed because it is not only a reflection of how you are as a leader, how the organization deals with situations like this but it is also a reflection of the type of people the organization attracts.
Is just somebody that’s looking for trouble or is it somebody that just going about their business doing what they need to be doing and then something happens?
It is how you deal with it. At that point, you become a different type of ambassador for your company. You become the policy and procedure ambassador. What I am getting at is they get to see the other side of the store. They get to see the other side of the business. They do not only get to see the front end of the business everybody else sees but they now get to see the inner workings of the organization and how all of that functions.
They get to see the company deals with situations as they arise.
You become an ambassador not just on the front end of the house but also in the administrative side of the house.
When it comes to customer complaints, as a leader, you have a unique opportunity to show others what you are made of. Don’t let them down.