A Quick Guide for Managing Customer Complaints

Effective complaint management has always been one of the most crucial elements for the success of any business organization. With the advent of social media customers are in a powerful position and in case of a single unpleasant experience with a company, people spread negative word of mouth on social media sites like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc.

This is why a business organization needs to adopt a professional approach towards dealing with customers’ complaints. In a recent article published in Forbes it was stated that putting your emotions aside and being flexible are among the top 10 Tips for dealing with customer complaints. Surveys and customer behavioral studies reveal that customers keep judging businesses based on their problem solving skills. Listed below are some guidelines to set things right when you go wrong with your products and/or services.

Guidelines for Representatives

• Quietly listen to the customer’s complaint and thank him/her for raising the issue with you.

• Show patience and treat your customers with courtesy.

• Respond to the complaint promptly and make sure that it is resolved asap. In case you cannot resolve the complaint on an immediate basis, be realistic and honest with your customer and keep them informed about what will happen next and when.

• Listen attentively, clarify if there is any miscommunication and summarize back what the customer has just complained about. This wins the customers’ confidence.

• Never take the customer’s anger towards you personally and don’t become defensive. Instead, apologize for the inconvenience a customer has faced and come up with a solution.

• Keep the customer updated during each phase of the complaint resolution process and inform him/her when the issue has been finally resolved.

• Promise the customer that he/she won’t face the same situation in the future.

Tips for Managers

• Have a team of dedicated customer support agents whose job is to manage customer complaints.

• Empower customer support staff to figure out solutions for different problems.

• Make sure that the customer is satisfied with the solution proposed by your customer support staff.

• Ensure that the customer support staff gets back to the customer after resolving his/her complaint and evaluates their satisfaction level.

• Analyze the feedback received from your customers after resolution of the complaint to see what can be done further.

• Integrating live chat support on your business website or portal is a great way to address the needs of the customers and to manage any complaints they might have. LiveAdmins® which is a leading multilingual online chat support company, offers state of the art live chat software that not only allows customer care staff to communicate seamlessly with customers’ but also makes their communication more efficient with features such as smart chat routing and reporting.