Complaints, who cares?
Jul
29
Written by:
29/07/2011 15:06
No one likes dealing with an awkward customer but handling complaints succesfully can make all the difference in retaining a loyal customer base and minimising the impact of that complaint both on your customer and on your business.
It used to be the idiom that for each satisfied customer who kept their opinion to themselves every unsatisfied customer told at least a dozen people about their bad experience. Think how many more people can be reached now via Facebook and Twitter!
Every complaint represents an opportunity for improvement, ask yourself;
What can you do to keep that situation from ever coming up again?
- Is the person complaining making a valid point?
- What are they asking you to do to resolve it?
I'm much more likely to go back to a company, where I had a problem, if the person I spoke to took ownership of the problem and bent over backwards to get it sorted out. That's not to say that annoying people is a new and innovative method of customer retention. Mistakes happen. It’s a part of doing business, but you should never make the same mistake twice. Learn from each complaint and be all the better for it, you'll save yourself an ulcer in the long run.