Winning Customer Service Turns Complaints Customer Loyalty

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Every customer complaint about a product or service they received from your company, is an opportunity to deliver winning customer service and create customer loyalty.

How your employees react to the challenge of customer complaints will determine if you will win the customers and get them back on your side, using your services, buying your products, and bringing in profits. Complaints provide the perfect opportunity to impress a customer and convince them to remain loyal to your company. Winning customer service battles results in higher, long-term profit.

Simple solutions to deliver winning customer service

Customer complaints stem from three different things: mistakes, dissatisfaction with the actual product, or a problem with the personal service they received during the buying and follow-up process.

  • Mistakes happen in every company and, as long as they are not a chronic issue, they can be dealt with easily enough by apologizing and correcting them.
  • Dissatisfaction with the product should be dealt with in a similar fashion: offer refunds or replacements.
  • Problems with service practices, or any of your employees straying from them, require a more extensive make-up procedure.

How to change customer complaints into customer loyalty

When a customer has a complaint, the first thing they want to be sure of is that they will be heard by the company. The first step in turning “I’ll never do business with you again!” to “I’d like to place my next order” is acknowledging and responding to the complaint preferably within the same business day, but no longer than 24 hours. The rule with customers is the sooner the better.

Every current or future customer should be made to feel that they are the most important to your company, even though that’s rarely the case.

The next step is to diffuse a tense situation, and there is a very simple way to do this. The customer service representative should begin the conversation by stating they are ready to solve whatever problem the customer has. No one can argue with that. Then listen to the customer without breaking in to utter scripted responses.

Winning customer service requires specific solutions

Once the customer presents the issues, solutions must be tailored toward the individual. Most companies have set refund policies in place, but more lenient ones will help turn irate customers into repeat customers. The important thing is the illusion that you are giving this customer a personalized solution to his or her particular problem, even if it is the same solution used for every complaint.

After the refund or other solution is processed and done, following up contact becomes vital to a continuing business relationship. Send out an email or make a quick call to determine if they are still satisfied with the solution and if there is anything else you could help them with. The more personal the contact sounds, the greater chance to win the customer back to buying from your company once more.

Just win the customer!

Winning customer service is, from a company’s point of view, a method to garner more sales and profits. Satisfying customer complaints on both a financial and personal level will do more to turn negatives into positives for your account books and reputation. Solving problems, even if your company created them to begin with, does more to win the customer as a repeat customers than mere friendly service could.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Flavio Martins
Flavio Martins is the VP of Operations and Customer Support at DigiCert, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise authentication services and high-assurance SSL certificates trusted by thousands of government, education, and Fortune 500 organizations. Flavio is an award-winning customer service blogger, customer service fanatic, and on a mission to show that organizations can use customer experience as a competitive advantage win customer loyalty. Blog: Win the Customer!

1 COMMENT

  1. Customer’s complaints are very important in order to make every company realize what is really the best for their customers. Recognizing customer’s complaints can make every customer feel safe and being treated as an important person. Making them realize that their is someone who wants to help or assist them anytime they need it. In that way, customer will remain loyal to the company.

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