When a customer is angry or unhappy with your service, a good inbound call center can help turn them back into a loyal customer. One of the most important things for any company’s success is customer satisfaction. If your customers are pleased and happy with your service, they are more likely to continue making purchases. On the other hand, one mistake or negative experience can turn them off for life. When a customer does have a bad experience, it is crucial to resolve their complaint as quickly as possible, so that you do not lose them as a customer.
Successful inbound call centers will have strategies and methods in place for their customer complaints handling. Here are five strategies that inbound call centers use to handle customer complaints.
Deal with Customers Personally
When customers have a complaint, they want it to be heard and known that is being addressed. This is why it is crucial to always personally communicate with customers who are complaining. Automated voice systems cannot effectively resolve customer complaints in the same way that a live agent can. Not only should companies personally communicate with their customers, but they should take an active initiative when dealing with complaints. When customers complain through email or social media, contacting them over the phone is an effective way to let them know that their complaint is being taken seriously.
Empower Agents
Many companies or call centers will use formal scripts for their customer service. While this may seem like a good idea, a one-size-fits-all approach will never serve all of your customers or complaints well. Instead, it’s important to empower live agents so that they can respond to each complaint individually, allowing them to deal with the specific problem that the customer has. Providing your agents with more freedom will ensure they can provide whatever service your customer needs.
Act on Customer Feedback
When handling customer complaints, the most important thing is that you resolve the complaint effectively. If a customer does not see any action taken due to their complaint, they will be unsatisfied and will likely take their business to a competitor. When handling a complaint, customer service agents should make clear exactly what steps will be taken to solve the issue. Clearly outlining what the resolution will be and following through is the most crucial step to dealing with customer complaints.
Determine and Manage Customer’s Expectations
Even if your company feels that a complaint is resolved in a satisfactory way, it may still leave a customer feeling unhappy or as if their problem hasn’t been solved. Often, a customer’s expectations can be out of line with a company’s solution, and two customers with the same complaint can have very different ideas on what will resolve their complaint. Some customers may be looking for discounts or refunds, while others may want to see an improvement in service. It’s important that customer service agents are trained and can accurately determine what the customer’s expectations are. Once this has been done, agents need to manage the customer’s expectations, ensuring that the customer will be satisfied with the resolution that is reached.
Acknowledge Customer’s Anger and Apologize
Regardless of the situation, one of the first steps to resolving customer complaints is acknowledging that they are upset. Before you even get all of the details of the call, apologize simply for the fact that they are upset and then proceed to find ways to fix their problem. Giving the customer the right to be angry is important and will help you take the next step of having a conversation.
Take Complaints as a Positive
A complaint generally means that something went wrong. Even if that something was in the communication and not actually in the product or process, it is still valuable to know what that something was. You should really be viewing all complaints as a means to fine tune your business. If there is something procedural or product-related that can be fixed, be grateful your customers are letting you know about it.
Review Your Complaints Daily
You won’t learn much from your customer complaints if you aren’t reviewing them consistently. A big part of handling customer complaints is learning from your mistakes. By reviewing your complaints on a daily basis, you learn how to better attend to customer complaints and what mistakes can be avoided altogether.
Understand Customer Complaints Properly
This is a tip that should be near the top of your list for handling customer complaints. It’s near impossible to fully solve a customer’s complaint if you don’t know the true reason they are upset. Sometimes the initial complaint can be about a service and upon further conversation you might find out that the customer is actually upset about the cost of that service. Getting to the core of their issue better prepares you to figure out the most effective means of turning a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied customer.
Be Ready with Support Networks to Solve Complaints
Once you’ve determined what the customer is complaining about, you are better prepared to solve the problem quickly. That means either having the right resources yourself or knowing who to transfer the call to in order to satisfy the customer complaint. And it would help if you brief the next person or taken detailed notes before transferring a call. There’s nothing more frustrating to customers than having to repeat their problem to more than one agent. As both an inbound call center, 3C Contact Services offers professional customer service to all of our clients. This includes having trained agents who know how to skillfully manage customer complaints to diffuse the anxiety and find effective solutions for your customers.
As the leading provider of outsourced call center solutions, 3C Contact Services teaches its partners the necessary customer service skills needed to engage and retain customers. Call us today at 1-888-353-2335.
