Customer Complaints: Use these Simple Hacks to Respond Effectively

Businesses receive numerous customer complaints every day. It is natural for businesses. Usually, customers complain because they are stuck somewhere and want a solution. For example, they probably made a purchase that did not meet their expectation—a product, service, or maybe a combination of the two. As a result, it affected their customer service experience. Thus, the customer service industry cannot avoid complaints. They must take care of the customer by listening to the complaint and resolving it in time, to ensure a happy customer.

Moreover, companies should not assume the absence of feedback as a sign of customer satisfaction. According to a customer experience survey conducted by Kolksy, only one out of every 26 customers is likely to bring up their complaints. The other 25 customers will simply take their business elsewhere without a word. Therefore, the customers need to know that they have a voice and that you will listen and take necessary actions.

7 Ways To Effectively Answer Customer Complaints

Here are a few ways by which companies can attend to customer complaints and keep them satisfied with their products and services.

1. Apologise

The most important thing to do when you receive a complaint is to apologize. If you have disappointed your customers in some way, then they deserve an apology for the inconvenience caused. It can make a huge difference in the conversation that will follow up. Further, even if the fault was not from the company’s side and the customer is still complaining, it is still appropriate to sympathetically apologize. For example, they can say something like, “I’m sorry for what you had to experience”. As a result, it will disarm an angry customer very quickly.

2. Personalise Your Response

While answering customer complaints, make sure that you use your customer’s first name. Stay polite and thank your consumers for pointing out something specific. Further, mention your name during the conversation as well to demonstrate that you are personally dealing with their feedback. Moreover, you can use information gathered from previous interactions to personalize your response even better.

3. Listen

Responding is not the only necessary thing. You need to make sure you actually listen to what your customer has to say and note down as many details as you can. Further, let them take out all of their frustration while keeping in mind that it is not a personal issue. Listening calmly and staying professional in such situations will show them that you genuinely care about their satisfaction and want to resolve their issues completely.

4. Provide Solutions Quickly

After listening to the complaint comes the problem resolution. Some customer complaints can not be resolved in 60 minutes or less, but they can at least be addressed. If you need a few days to investigate the customer’s complaint, inform them immediately, not after those few days. You need to provide a solution to the problem they are facing as soon as possible. More than 85 per cent of customers think businesses should respond to emails within an hour, according to a survey by Toister Performance Solutions.

Thus, leaving the customer hanging might frustrate them and affect their customer service experience. These days, businesses use AI to provide fast resolutions to customer complaints. For example, you can use AI-Powered voice assistants and chatbots to send automated responses for an instant problem resolution. 

5. Escalate When Necessary

While handling a customer complaint, if agents feel like they are not able to provide a solution to a specific complaint for some reason, then they should escalate it to their supervisor sooner rather than later. Therefore, your company must always have an escalation plan in place. It will help the agents know who the call should be forwarded to and when so you can get your customers’ complaints resolved quickly.

AI-Powered solutions can be used to create an effective escalation plan. Using speech analytics technology can determine the satisfaction level of the customers in real-time. If it is low, then the customer can be escalated to an agent with higher satisfaction scores.

6. Avoid Over Automation

It can be tempting to automate all of your marketing and sales tasks to cut costs and time if using automation technologies, but you shouldn’t automate just because you can. Different customers prefer different modes of communication. However, automation, when controlled, can be very beneficial. Provide a natural conversation using AI Voice Assistant so that the customer will feel personalised even while using automated services. 

7. Be Patient With Every Customer

Most representatives assume they know what the customer wants. When they answer their customer’s call, they rush to give them a solution to their problem. This can irritate your customer and could lead them to resent your company. Therefore, agents need to stay patient while handling a complaint call. They should never handle these calls in a hurry.

To avoid losing customers, train your agents with effective listening skills. Make sure they’re taking the time to listen to the customer, understand their specific problem, and offer a solution. Encourage them to get rid of their scripts and work with the customer. Their focus should be on solving the problems of the customers, not on trying to take as many calls as possible. Otherwise, it can negatively impact the complaint resolution process.

Conclusion

Customer complaints can be stressful for businesses. It takes the customers’ time and energy to tell you how you could improve your business. So, you should be thankful for them. In conclusion, you should always answer them effectively so that your business is able to provide the best possible customer service experience. Using AI solutions can be quite helpful to achieve that.

We help in providing AI-Powered speech solutions like voice assistant and speech analytics that can transform the agent monitoring processes. We are offering a live demo of our AI-Powered solution to answer your queries. 

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