Five Solid Reasons Why Customers Complaints Should Be Taken Seriously!

This post is not only going to give you five solid reasons to emphasize the significance of customers complaints but will also provide a method, an approach on how to deal with customers complaints effectively, when I say effectively I mean “Effectively” ;p.

Now before going into details on how to deal with customers complaints effectively let’s first get through the five reasons that emphasize the significance of customer complaints and its impact on your business.

Five Reasons

1.      Cost

It costs five to eight times more to attract a new customer than to retain an old one ⁽¹⁾.

Since a complaining customer is already a retained asset therefore overlooking  or neglecting his/her complaints would mean losing a retained customer that is equal to losing around five to eight times savings you have from a retained customer as it costs 5-8 times more to acquire new customer than to retain old one.

2.      An Opportunity to Learn

Customers complaints provides opportunities for your business to learn, to enhance, to modify, to tweak, to make necessary changes to your product/service that your business has been overlooking prior to complaints like for instance a repeated complaint about certain thing would allude to a certain defect, internal problem, serious issue in value chain that is causing customer dissatisfaction thus resulting in repeated complaints.

Now focusing on that particular issue, would provide an opportunity for your business to learn, its staff to gain more experience, more insight, along with customer satisfaction so in the end it’s a win win situation for both sides.

3.      10 or More

According to a Harvard Business Review study customers that had negative experience with a brand told about it to ten or more people ⁽²⁾, now imagine the bad word of mouth of just a dozen customers, imagine a couple of dozen, imagine half of dozen customers complaining each day, imagine how many potential customers do you lose because of that, not to mention the harm done to the brand image…

And you know people report bad experience, write about it, blog about, discuss it, report it, complaint about it more often than compared to good experience.

4.      74% !!!

Even if you have some system in working, system to handle customers complaints but if it’s not swift, not effective in handling customers complaints then you are in big trouble. 

As according to another study 74% customers in US pointed out late response, irrelevant response from the concerned authorities about their queries, complaints etc as major cause of dissatisfaction ⁽³⁾.

74% is a huge chunk of any niche, imagine the consequences!!

5.      Interference

Inappropriate complaint handling can result in interference from various customer protection agencies, social media, government and judiciary which can complicate things further like bad press, public condemnation, media and government censure etc.

And considering these facts I believe it is imperative for any businesses to take customers complaints seriously.

  

How to deal with customers complaints effectively

Okay now let’s move to “How to deal with customers complaints effectively ?!” its simple, there are just couple of things you need to focus on.

1.      Right Handling of Right Complaints
2.      Right Tools & Resources

Right Handling of Right Complaints

Right handling of right complaints mean putting such a system (complaint handling approach, process etc) in working where neither the employees can hide, cover, manipulates “reported complaints” (to save his/her career, to avoid extra work load, because of lack of time etc) nor customers can lie, misinform, manipulates in terms of complaints he/she is making.

Such a system, approach would help you in getting “right handling of the right complaints”.

 

Right Tools & Resources

Right tools and right resources means making sure that right tools/resources are available to complaint handlers (those who do the “Right Handling of Right Complaints”). 

Make sure that those right tools/resources not only help in effectively dealing with customer complaints but are easy to utilize, use by your complaint handling teams and feasible for your business in the longer run.

Lastly make sure the duration between reported complaint and the right fix is short (as much possible).

That’s it, over to you guys!  :)

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References:

1.      http://www.secondopinionmarketing.co.uk/articles/customerintelligence/value.aspx

2.      Harvard Business Review, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman, July 2010.

3.      http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Global-Consumer-Pulse-Research-Study-2013-Key-Findings.pdf