Customer complaints are unavoidable in any service environment, be it on a live shop floor or at your contact centre. However, they must be handled quickly and tactfully to prevent a single complaint from becoming a sore point that destroys the customer relationship. What’s worse, customers today are likely to be vocal about their bad experience, costing you new business and referrals.
That’s why it is so crucial to have a robust complaint-handling strategy in your contact centre, equipping your agents (i.e., the stakeholders most likely to be on the receiving end of customer complaints), to diffuse the situation effectively.
Why You Need to Improve Your Customer Complaint-Handling Capabilities
Complaints aren’t just instances of a customer bringing a product or service lacuna to your notice. It indicates a degree of dissatisfaction and even disappointment with the brand. You could even look at it as a form of protest, given that loyal customers are likely to overlook minor issues and challenges without raising a formal grievance. Given this emotional context, customer complaints are usually precursors of disengagement, often leading to the decision to switch brands.
A recent survey by The Wall Street Journal found exactly how pernicious complaints can be, if not handled correctly.
- Two-thirds of consumers have filed a complaint last year, up from 57% in 2017. This means that customers are increasingly difficult to satisfy in a competitive marketplace and due to the proliferation of information resources
- The majority of customers who raised a complaint were not satisfied with the results. Companies can’t just try and resolve a problem like it never happened. Customers expect a genuine acknowledgement and value addition when it comes to handling a complaint
- Dissatisfied customers are sharing their experience with twice as many people, compared to 2017. They are also twice as likely to share their experience when compared to happy customers
The bottom line is that customer expectations from brands are constantly growing, and in the age of social media, it is much easier to vocalise your complaint. Plenty of competition means it is easier for customers to switch brands.
Tips for Handling Customer Complaints in a Contact Centre
- Craft a sequential script – A call script specific to customer complaints will guide agents through the various steps and checklists necessary to arrive at a resolution
- Emphasise the importance of empathy – Empathy entails that an agent put themselves in the customer’s shoes, without any hint of blame
- Leverage real-time call monitoring – Real-time call monitoring will allow a supervisor or more experienced colleague to barge into a particularly thorny conversation
- Be transparent – Agents must explain the entire resolution process to the customer, justifying each step (e.g., why the call needs to be transferred) and raising a complaint ticket that is shared with the customer
Finally, you need to recognise the various types of complaints that agents mighty encounter – these are typically product-related, service-related, or distribution-related (and this includes the web/mobile shopping experience). Categorising complaints into these buckets makes it easier to address the root cause and reduce similar complaints in the future.
