How to handle difficult customers- The easy way

Complaint Handling

Complaint handling is an art form often neglected by customer service departments. If your customer service team is not fully equipped to deal with angry and fractious customers, you may see that many of these individuals will defect to the competition.

It is perhaps inevitable that some of your customers will have reason to ring up and complain about some aspect of your service as no business gets it right all of the time. However, the effectiveness of your complaint handling procedure could well make a difference to whether or not the customer feels satisfied with the treatment they receive and continues to shop with you. Or they might feel that their complaint has been inadequately dealt with and take their business elsewhere.

Most complaint handling procedures are fairly simple. All of them are applicable to any business, whether you run a corner shop or a global web-based shopping empire. Instead of assuming that your customer care team are capable of handling customer complaints, always ensure that there is a series of procedures in place to deal with aggrieved customers.

When a customer makes a complaint, it is very important that you apologise immediately. Saying “sorry” is the first thing to do. The customer will probably be expecting a battle when they make contact, so by immediately apologising you will be able to diffuse the situation and hopefully prevent any escalation of the issue.

Initially, you should take the time to really listen to the customer’s complaint. Make sure you take plenty of notes during the complaint handling process, preferably so that the customer knows you are doing so. This demonstrates that you understand and, more importantly, care about the customer’s problem.

Always empathise rather than sympathise. You need to demonstrate that you understand the extent of their dissatisfaction. Saying sorry is good in the beginning, but it will not be enough in the long term. Continue to clarify the details throughout the conversation to further demonstrate that you fully understand their grievances.

Once you have established the details of the complaint, you need to decide what the best course of action is going to be. However, be wary of promising resolution of the issue without firm grounds for being able to fulfil your promises. It is very important that you are able to do exactly as you say you can, or you will lose the customer’s trust. Ideally, you should be able to promise a resolution to their complaint, but be honest with them if it is likely to take longer to sort out.

Always take full responsibility for the issue at hand. The golden rule with complaint handling is never to pass the buck on to somebody else. It might well be somebody else’s fault that the customer is having a problem with some aspect of your service, but you should not be tempted to blame that person. The customer needs to be able to trust you and believe that you will be able to deal effectively with their problem.

If the complaint is serious enough to warrant some kind of compensation, try and think of something other than cash compensation as there is always the possibility that you seriously undervalue the nature of the complaint. This could well lead to further problems in the long term. It is better to send a more personal gift as a recompense strategy. If your business is in the travel sector, some free travel would probably do the trick, but really you can use your imagination here.

Once the complaint has been successfully dealt with to the customer’s satisfaction, always follow up with some kind of contact. Many businesses simply send out a standard letter, but really what is called for is a demonstration of genuine interest in whether the customer is happy with the way things went. It also helps to let them know that as a result of their problems, you have made changes within the organization to prevent the exact same problems happening again. That way the customer feels their problems were not in vain and at least something good came from their difficulties.

Always monitor your complaint handling procedures and make changes if you think some aspects need tweaking. At the end of the day, a happy customer is a repeat customer.

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