While 61% of service professionals believe their organization addresses service issues proactively, only 33% of customers agree, according to Salesforce’s State of Service Report. This gap shows many businesses aren’t responding to customer complaints as well as they should.
You need to be vigilant to stay on top of complaints and have a clear line of sight into all the channels your customers may use to make their voices heard. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may also lack the number of employees to address complaints on a day-to-day basis, which makes investing and deploying automation technologies an essential best practice.
Use this post as a primer on identifying customer complaints, understanding the impact they can have on your business, and turning them into growth opportunities.
What Exactly Are Customer Complaints?
Customer complaints are moments when customers alert a business to a gap between their desired expectations and their experience. The majority (80%) of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services, according to the State of the Connected Customer Report. That means you can’t risk overlooking or ignoring complaints.
A complaint can come in via e-mail, text message, a social media post or in person when a customer visits a business’s physical location.
The content of customer complaints can also vary wildly. Some customers may be disappointed or angry that a product they bought isn’t working as it should or is failing to provide the value they expected. Others may complain that a service the business provided was too slow, too expensive, or was delivered with little attention to accuracy or quality.
Customers may take issue with the overall experience, such as rude or indifferent treatment from employees, confusing steps, long wait times, and glitches in payment processes.
Some customer complaints become common, usually pointing to an area for operational improvement. Others may be ad-hoc and surprising. They all need to be addressed with speed and compassion.
The Impact of Customer Complaints
Failing to resolve the issues behind customer complaints can have dire consequences for businesses and can directly impede your ability to grow. The fallout can include:
Diminished brand reputation: Everyone can access social media platforms to talk to a wide audience about where a business went wrong. Even if your customers don’t use social media, they talk to friends and family about negative experiences. Either way, your brand risks becoming known for a shoddy approach to handling customers who complain.
Reduced customer loyalty: Why should customers stick with a business that doesn’t respond (or responds poorly) when they complain? They can easily take their business elsewhere next time, even if they’ve been buying from your company for years. How you handle complaints reflects how much you value your relationship with customers.
Increased customer churn: It’s bad enough when loyal customers leave, but you can also lose first-time customers. Churn refers to the volume of customers who stop using your products and services. It can be expensive to replace customers with new ones.
Decreased revenue: Every lost sale due to a poorly handled complaint means less money to cover expenses and invest in growth opportunities. If you care about the bottom line, you need to care just as much about customer complaints.
Reduced employee morale: Your team may take the brunt of customers’ frustration and anger when they complain. Plus, your employees’ stress can increase if they don’t feel supported in addressing complaints. This cycle makes it harder for your team to bring their best selves to work, and in turn, can send your company culture in the wrong direction.
You’re probably never going to run a business without customer complaints. And in some respects, that’s not a bad thing, because treating complaints as data points can provide some potential upsides, including the following benefits.
Greater insight into customer pain points, needs, and preferences: Customers may not always know what they want, but they’re pretty clear on what they don’t want. When they complain, they tell you more about who they are, what they want, and how they want it. This process can bring as many insights as conducting market research.
Improved customer satisfaction: All businesses want their customers to be satisfied, but they don’t always define what satisfaction looks like. Complaints provide clues to what builds satisfaction by pointing out factors that get in the way.
Operational improvements: Many businesses have a vision of the customer experience they want to provide, but they don’t always know what’s happening in practice. Complaints create a map of what needs to be fixed across marketing, sales, service, and other business functions.
New products, services, and innovations: Sometimes, multiple complaints on a common theme point to an opportunity to add a solution to your portfolio. Taking this approach shows you’re listening and acting on feedback.
How to Handle Customer Complaints
When customers complain, start by acknowledging what they’ve said and apologize, provide an explanation, or both.
Next, take steps to fix the problem or consider opportunities to make it up to the customer next time. Some businesses offer discounts on the next purchase, for instance.
How can you handle customer complaints in an even more strategic way? These tactics are your best bets.
1. Empower service reps with helpful solutions
Customer service employees have traditionally been overwhelmed with customer complaints because they needed to look up information manually. Customers get frustrated when they reach out to complain and have to wait for reps to find their account information, purchase history, and other data.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has improved customer service by offering reps tools that instantly connect them to the customer data they need. The most advanced AI for customer service goes beyond surfacing insights — it autonomously takes action on employees’ behalf, handling customer complaints like a trusted colleague.
2. Decide where to employ self-service options
According to the State of Service Report, self-service resolves an average of 54% of customer issues at organizations that use it, and 61% of customers would rather use self-service for simple issues. Customers often complain about problems they could resolve on their own, if they had the right tools.
At the same time, human oversight and intervention are necessary to resolve some complaints even with self-service. Make it easy for customers to escalate an issue and get direct assistance from your team as needed.
3. Lead with empathy
Many businesses respond to customer complaints sympathetically. But sympathy is not enough. Customers don’t want you to feel sorry for them. They want to see that you have felt the way they do and can share their feelings, otherwise known as empathy.
Empathy should always inform your response to complaints, whether on the phone or in e-mails, text messages or social media posts.
4. Take responsibility
It’s not the customer’s fault when products break or orders don’t arrive. They know this, but they also want to hear you say it. When you take responsibility for mistakes or breakdowns in the customer experience, you tell customers that taking responsibility is part of your company’s values.
People gravitate to brands that show they’re committed to doing the right thing, even when they initially do the wrong thing.
5. Follow up
You haven’t fully addressed a complaint until you check in with customers afterward. See if your actions had the desired effect. If not, you may have more work to do. Treat follow-up as part of an ongoing conversation with customers that defines the quality of the relationship you’re building with them.
6. Track all complaints
The majority (80%) of customers believe customer experiences should be better considering all the data companies collect, according to the State of the Connected Customer Report. Customers can remember their interactions with your company long after you and your team have moved on. If they need to bring forward another complaint, they’ll expect you to have a history of your relationship close at hand.
7. Collect customer feedback
If you’re not doing so already, send a regular satisfaction survey via e-mail or text after customers make purchases. Think about setting up additional social media accounts dedicated to listening to customers about their experience. Use the data you gather to improve your complaint resolution strategy.
8. Make changes to avoid common complaints
The same issues should not crop up repeatedly. If customers complain they didn’t understand a policy, for example, update your FAQ pages or add simple explanations to your receipt. The data you collect from complaints should drive improvements.
Common Examples of Customer Complaints
Whether you’re a startup or a long-established business, people buying from you expect you to know how to deal with customer complaints. Here are some common examples.
Quality issues
Some products arrive broken. Others seem to malfunction even with gentle use. Quality issues are a staple of negative customer reviews, and you can avoid them by quickly offering customers a replacement product and talking to your product team or manufacturer about potential defects.
Long customer service wait times
Nobody wants to hear about “longer than normal” wait times when they reach out, and even the most cheerful hold music won’t mollify them. Automating customer service can alleviate wait times by allowing AI to handle some customer complaints. Offering service through multiple channels can give customers more options than a phone call. Self-service goes a long way in this area, too.
Shipping delays
Customers would ideally like to get their purchases yesterday, but they’ll settle for having them arrive on time. When something goes wrong in the supply chain, their complaints are understandable. You may not be able to speed up the shipment, but you can let them track their order status, either through a website or mobile app.
Product availability
Getting a notification that says “out of stock” is a disappointing end to any shopping journey. AI can help by providing recommendations for alternative products and adding customers to wait lists so they’re notified when inventory changes.
Turn Complaints Into Opportunities
The customer complaints you encounter can become bumps on the road of a long journey you take to deliver outstanding experiences.
Though customers may deliver concerns with annoyance or even anger, they’re really a gift. The worst thing customers can do is say nothing and walk away, leaving your business wondering what went wrong.Take advantage of technology that helps your business capitalize on the opportunities customer complaints represent. Learn what an AI-powered, data-driven CRM can do to turn complaining customers into your biggest advocates.
