HOW TO DERIVE BENEFITS FROM CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

Customer complaints are one of the challenges organizations face on a daily basis. It is a threat that can kill a business in the absence of a defensive marketing strategy.  Nevertheless, organizations can derive a lot of benefits from customer complaints and thus turn a negative trend or development that may arise from disgruntled customers to a great marketing opportunity.

Poor handling of customer complaints can stamp a company out of existence because if one dissatisfied customer bad- mouths the company’s product or service to five prospective customers, hundreds of people will invariably begin to see the company from the perspective of the first dissatisfied customer.

However, customer complaints are not negative or bad occurrences in marketing. It is a normalcy and should be anticipated by customer service personnel in every organization. No matter how perfect an organization’s operation is, no matter how perfectly designed and implemented a marketing operation is; mistake will happen. The best a company can do is to make presentation and resolution of complaints very easy for customers.

Therefore, to satisfy an unhappy customer, customer service people should deal with customers’ negative experience properly without giving them an atom of odd feelings.  These five proven procedures can help resolve customer complaints and restore their goodwill.

• ·         Establishment of a 24/7 toll free hotline.  Resolving issues with customers requires a veritable and accessible communication channel which customers can easily run to anytime to lodge their complaints. Provision of an avenue to express their grievances will first allay customers’ plights and at the same time give them a ray of hope that the issue will be resolve soon.

• ·         Attending to the customer need as quickly as possible:  one thing people cherish a lot is time. No customer goes to an organization to lodge complain and then got carried away by the beauty and quality of the ambience. They are always in are hurry to attend to their own business. For this reason, it will be highly expedient that the dissatisfied customer leave the organization with a good impression of the organization by putting time-saving procedures in place for complaints resolution. Even if there is a need to delay the customers for some minutes let them know how long it will take to wait. Anything short of this will not only prompts the customer to dis the customer service attendants but also the organization and everything it presents and represents.

• ·         Accepting responsibility for customers’ dissatisfaction: customer service personnel should out of courtesy never attempt to put the blame at the feet of the customer. Their job behooves them to stoop to endear more customers to the organizations. Pacify the complaining customers with apologies and he will earn you more customers.  

• ·    Hiring customer service people who are empathic: To make benefits out of a negative development, a customer-centered organization should hire customer service people who are customer-friendly and see customers’ problems as theirs.  This will no doubt increase the loyalty of the customers and invariably increase the sales of the organization.

• ·              Resolve the complaints swiftly and to the customers’ satisfaction. The earlier the resolution of the complaints the better for the customers and the organization.  Some complaining customers are not looking for compensation in as much as the company or organization attend to them and help them resolve the problem as promptly as possible to the customers’ satisfaction. Ask them if there is more issue to solve, they will gladly thank you for the one you deed.

Finally, one of the easiest ways to offend customers is through the customers’ service personnel and sales representatives. These are irrefutable brand contacts customers deal with every day. So any ugly experience from these brand contacts will always have resonant effects on the dissatisfied customers. Therefore, it is expedient for organizations to train and re train their human brand contacts on

Dealing with customers to raise the sales volume and boost the customer base of the organization.