Customer complaints — they come in the form of an angry email, a scathing online review, an awkward in-person encounter, a negative tweet, or an unexpected phone telephone call. It's tough to hear, but customer complaints result from y'all, your production, your staff, or your service falling short of expectations. As difficult and uncomfortable as they are, handling client complaints is an important part of doing business, and they must be dealt with properly.

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At a time where the success of your business rests on word-of-oral cavity marketing and the need for positive customer experiences, you need to equip yourself and your team with a process for sourcing, hearing, responding to, and fixing client complaints.

In this mail service, we'll provide a step-by-step procedure for responding to customer reviews and complaints, tips for gathering feedback from customers, and best practices on addressing the issues head-on.

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Customer complaints tin can come through different mediums like Google Reviews, a phone phone call, or even a handwritten letter of the alphabet. They'll each communicate different levels of frustration and crave unique solutions to resolve the issue. That said, building out and relying on a roadmap for responding to these complaints is a necessary starting point. From in that location, you should customize this approach for each customer interaction.

Here's the procedure we recommend when responding to client complaints.

ane. Listen to or read the customer's complaint.

When you have a customer complaint, your first job is to listen to the event and focus on what your client is experiencing. Regardless of whether the complaint is over a toll increase, a bad meal, or a service outage, your customer is reaching out to you to express their frustration.

Information technology'southward like shooting fish in a barrel to become defensive or to write off the complaint, but keep in mind that complaints rarely exist in a vacuum— if one client is coming to you with this complaint, several others are keeping repose virtually the same one.

A customer's complaint should always be treated as legitimate, so requite their story your full attention and empathy.

2. Take a moment to process the criticism.

Some feedback can hitting hard. It'south not easy to acknowledge that you let a customer downward, but getting to the root of the problem is an essential step to properly handling their complaint.

If y'all become this feedback online — such equally an online review or through social media — yous have some time to sympathise where the customer is coming from. This will be a bit harder if you're getting this criticism in real-time, like in person or over a phone telephone call. The latter situation calls on yous to put yourself in your customer's shoes sooner than later on and truly prioritize fixing the issue — which can only be done if y'all mind to the complaint and digest the meaning within it.

three. Make up one's mind what activeness y'all'll take to address the trouble.

Customer complaints tin can be commonplace, and so chances are you'll know how to solve an issue almost immediately afterwards listening to the details behind information technology.

Notwithstanding, as you're well aware, sometimes a complaint comes completely out of left field and you lot're non sure what to do. If you need some fourth dimension to think about the best form of activeness, be honest with your customers. Tell them you need time to effigy out how y'all can all-time make information technology up to them and provide a timeline for when you'll reach out with a solution — or meliorate nonetheless, ask customers what they demand for y'all to go far upward to them, and figure out if their asking is doable.

4. Thank the customer for their feedback.

Nosotros've harkened back to this idea a few times, just it's important — the majority of customers who have complaints with your business organization volition not communicate them to yous. That tin leave you totally in the dark near how your customers really feel. Therefore, the beginning affair you should say when responding to a customer complaint is "thank you for letting me know."

There's no law that states customers have to share feedback or go out a review. Some customers feel uncomfortable confronting businesses with negativity and would rather just ignore the issue or stop doing business with y'all altogether. The information that feedback contains tin can radically ameliorate your customer feel, so even if the comments don't make yous feel good in the moment, you should nevertheless thank customers for their insight.

five. Apologize and reiterate your understanding of the result.

Immediately subsequently thanking the client, you should apologize for what happened and express empathy by explaining your understanding of the situation.

For example, let's say an account manager working for an ecommerce platform receives an electronic mail from her client, saying his online payment arrangement temporarily went down. The response should start like this:

This response thanks the client for sharing feedback, apologizes for the outcome, explains what led to the situation, and shows an understanding of how the issue afflicted the client. The customer should at present understand that his business relationship rep fully understands the reason for the complaint and values his business and feedback.

6. Clearly outline your plan to remedy the situation.

If the example above ended after those ii paragraphs, this consequence would hardly accept been handled well. A proper response to a customer complaint is incomplete without an explanation of what happens adjacent.

These days, it's best practice to go above and across when remedying customer complaints. Let's return to the example of the broken payment processor, and pick things up where nosotros left them to show how we tin remedy this situation:

This explanation outlines the improvement to the service and compensates the customer for his potentially lost acquirement. At present, he knows more information about the upshot, what's existence washed to prevent it from recurring, and is getting gratis software for sharing his criticisms — this kind of response encourages customer feedback and makes it more likely this customer will share his opinion moving forward.

7. Give thanks the client once again and offer follow-up information.

If you've followed the steps up until now, the complaint should be sufficiently addressed and your customer should feel like the consequence has been fully resolved.

If that's the case, thank the customer once again for reaching out and offer follow-upwards information or instructions if the customer needs to get back in touch with you.

This footstep is particularly of import for online reviews, which contain much less back-and-forth discussion (if any) compared to complaints made over electronic mail, on the phone, via social media, or in person. If customers are writing a review online, they might non take the contact data to follow up with the best person, so consider leaving the name, phone number, and/or e-mail address of the person to speak to at the end of a negative online review.

8. Check in to see if the customer is happy with the result.

Afterward some time has passed, you lot should follow up with customers to see if they're satisfied with the resolution.

The time frame is definitely fuzzy for this ane — some issues tin can be followed upwards with a few days or even weeks after they were resolved, while more than time-sensitive ones warrant a follow-upward within a day.

Employ your gut here — it's better to over-communicate afterwards a client complaint than the other way around, every bit it shows you really practise care near the trouble and wish to make upwardly for information technology.

9. Comprise changes from customer feedback.

Afterwards all is said and done, it'southward fourth dimension to follow through with your promises. If you complained about a mishap and were promised a alter that didn't happen, wouldn't you exist pretty upset?

Not every complaint warrants a change in business strategy. For example, if one client complains her shipment was damaged, this doesn't mean you lot need to overhaul your entire supply concatenation. Nevertheless, if 100 customers complain almost having damaged shipments, maybe you should expect into your warehouse or shipping centers.

This is on y'all to mind carefully, draw connections between complaints, and determine if larger action is warranted. If you lot receive multiple complaints near one employee, one production, or ane characteristic, that probably means in that location's a problem with that employee, production, or feature that needs to be addressed.

Tips for Responding to Customer Complaints

1. Stay calm, even when it'south not your error.

It would be naive to pretend every customer complaint is a valid one. Sometimes customers get things wrong, mix up companies, and make mistakes. It can be frustrating to go along calmly without letting the client know where they went incorrect immediately upon leaving a negative review, just don't give in to the temptation.

You'll still desire to follow the steps above to lengthened the situation and be empathetic. Once the customer is calm, you tin can kindly explain to them where the mix upwardly happened and offer a genuine explanation. Once the client understands the issue, yous can politely ask that they remove the negative review — that's if they don't offer to do it offset. Think to assume positive intent during encounters similar these, a scrap of calmness and understanding tin can go a long way when resolving customer complaints.

two. Avert Deflecting Blame

Every bit a member of the customer service team, the buck stops with you. If your sales team makes a huge blunder, don't let the client know that. Afterward all, they don't care who did it, they just want a solution. Plus, it doesn't build trust with the customer or your sales team to throw them under the bus.

Get comfortable accepting criticism that has been misplaced. Instead, you can relay the feedback behind the scenes in a respectful way — a preparation refresher tin can be the perfect forum to accost the root cause of a complaint without playing the arraign game.

3. Put Yourself in the Client's Shoes

A chip of empathy makes all the difference when resolving customer complaints. After all, you lot're a client more oftentimes than you're a customer service representative, so put yourself in their shoes when handling complaints. How would you desire the consequence resolved? What would make y'all do business with your visitor again?

Provide the client with a fair and constructive experience to go through the turbulent state of affairs. Put their feelings and needs first as much as yous can within the scope of your customer service policies.

four. Seek the Customer'south Permission

Before you spout off a decision in haste, inquire the customer for their permission to let yous to solve the problem. "I understand how inconvenient this is for you lot. Can I share a few options I've come up with to make things right?" Information technology seems obvious that they'd want you to fix things, only asking for permission in a heated exchange gives the customer a moment to willingly cooperate and come to the best solution. It puts you on their side and positions yous both against the problem rather than customer vs service rep.

Bonus Tip: Build a Response Plan and Bank

If your business receives feedback often, make sure y'all have a documented brand phonation and response strategy in place. Recollect, you may want to download and customize these review response prompts if you detect yourself spending also much time responding to reviews each week.

Complaint Response Examples

one. Sample Letter Responding to a Complaint

What works about this letter is that it allows the customer service representative to accept responsibleness for solving the problem. Instead of deflecting arraign onto the "company" as a whole by using "we" statements, the rep uses "I" statements to make the conversation more personal. This is a 18-carat way to build trust with the client and assure them that their feedback isn't falling into a void.

2. Sample Email Responding to a Complaint

This simple, yet constructive email covers all the basis of handling a customer complaint. It acknowledges the customer'southward issue, offers an apology, and goes higher up and beyond to resolve the matter. Finally, the rep extends gratitude to the customer for doing business organization with the visitor and expresses interest in standing the relationship now that the complaint has been handled.

iii. Sample Telephone Script Responding to a Complaint

Representative: "Hi there, thanks for calling Pearl Provisions. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?"

Customer: "Hello, my name is Pam. I'thou non happy with the service I received final week at Pearl Provisions. My family'south food was served cold and I didn't receive any acknowledgement of the issue by the manager."

Representative: "Pam, I'g sorry to hear you had a bad experience at our eating house. I sympathise that the meals you received were not served according to our high standards and there was no recourse to brand things correct."

Client: "Yeah that is correct and I'd similar some sort of redress for the inconvenience."

Representative: "Pam, I can assure yous that I'll make things right. We hope you lot'll give us the opportunity to earn your business organization again. Commencement, I'll pass your feedback to the managing director of the restaurant and ostend that this incident volition be reviewed and resolved. With your permission, I tin can also mail you a gift menu that you can use at the restaurant someday inside the next calendar month. Does that sound similar something you lot'd exist interested in?"

Customer: "Yes that would be swell. Cheers."

Representative: "Alright, let'southward get that gift card mailed to yous."

Restating the issue goes a long fashion in this complaint response example template. In doing this, the rep assures the customer that they empathise the problem and the affect it'due south having on their business. Following this up with an applicable solution makes this a practical template that can exist customized for simply about any type of complaint.

Handling Customer Complaints

Responding to client complaints is never fun, but information technology's role of the chore. Taking the time to develop a strategy for responding to these complaints and handling each incident with care shows your customers that you value them. This makes it much less likely that they'll practice business organization with a competitor. Go on these best practices in heed the next time you get to reply to a review, a tweet, or take a chat with someone who shares feedback with your business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Originally published Aug 16, 2021 one:00:00 PM, updated Baronial 17 2021