Handling

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Handling
Customer
Complaints
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Complaints are opportunitiesnot problems!

• 96 percent of dissatisfied customers never bother
  to complain
• Each happy customer will tell at the most six
  other people

Handling Customer Complaints
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How to Handle Customer Complaints

• Dont be defensive
• Be composed at all times
• Dont take criticisms personally
• Offer an apology even if the disservice is not
  your fault
• Show empathy by using such phrases as I can
  understand how you feel, I appreciate what
  youre saying.

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How to Handle Customer Complaints

• Address customers by name
• All communication should be in the first person.
  Use I am sorry not the royal we
• Dont make excuses or blame others in your
  organization
• Give the customer your full attention and
  establish eye contact
• Paraphrase their complaint in your own words to
  determine whether you have correctly understood
  the situation.

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How to Handle Customer Complaints

• If you dont know the answer to their problem,
  dont lie.
• Do call back when you say you will, even if for
  some reason, you havent been able to obtain a
  satisfactory answer by then
• Make the customer part of the solution - not part
  of the problem

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How to Handle Customer Complaints

• Tell them what you can donot what you cant do
• Find out what it will take to turn their
  dissatisfaction into satisfaction
• If they agree to that solution, act quickly
  before they change their mind
• Follow up
• And remember You can never win an argument with
  a customer

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Find out what you customers really think

• Surveys, focus groups, mystery shopping
• One complaint statistically represents 24 similar
  ones
• Test your own service delivery

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Listen carefully and assume nothing

• Never assume anything in communications
• Do not dismiss any of the customers complaint as
  irrelevant
• Give value to actual customer experience

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When all else fails - how to make amends

• 95 of customers who have a complaint that was
  handled efficiently and promptly will not only
  continue to do business but will become even more
  brand-loyal (Wharton Business School)
• Product replacements, good will gifts, free of
  charge services, etc

Good service is Good Business, Catherine Devrye,
2001
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Daghang Salamat!