Does your business face low rates of customer complaint resolution? Keeping up with an endless slew of customer complaints can be challenging, not to mention, exhausting and admin intensive. Your customer satisfaction rate is your greatest indication of where your business is at - without the approval of your customers, your business is unlikely to succeed.
When customer complaints start rolling in, it is important to address them timeously to improve the customer experience and maintain your reputation. Here are some of the most common customer complaints, as well as how they should ideally be addressed:
1 . Complaint Resolution Mistakes: Being Left on Hold
Callers want answers to their customer complaints and questions asap, and when your customer support services fail to come up with the best complaint resolution, this can be upsetting to them. Furthermore, if your business fails to answer the phone, customers may not call back at all - they may choose to contact a competing business instead. For this reason, having a reliable customer complaints resolution service can greatly reduce customer wait times, reduce customer complaints and improve business performance.
Tip: In order to reduce call volumes and manage customer complaints, make sure that your website has a FAQ section where the answers to simpler questions can easily be found. If longer wait times are impossible to resolve, the demand is likely too high for your team to manage. In this case, consider outsourcing your escalation management support team to alleviate the pressure from your in-house employees.
2 . Complaint Resolution Mistakes: Having to Repeat Themselves
When customers have to repeat themselves multiple times, this is frustrating and time-consuming for them. This can happen because they’re being repeatedly transferred and the agent they're talking to is disinterested or isn't paying attention. This adds more layers of frustration to the situation making the complaint resolution process more challenging.
Disinterested representatives can upset customers enough to ensure that they never call back. Customers occasionally have exceedingly high expectations that cannot be met, but for the most part, customer complaints and questions can be dealt with effectively as long as the following measures are in place:
- Consistent organisation
- Attentive representatives
- An optimised management system
When customer complaint resolution is not achieved regardless of where the fault lies, it is your business’s reputation that takes the hit. A disorganised process leads affect your employees, leaving them unsure of their roles and responsibilities and can contribute to the endless transferring of calls. Representatives are more likely to be attentive if they feel equipped to deal with situations as and when they arise and feel like their work environment is well managed.
Tip: Invest in help-desk software to automate part of your customer support process and distribute incoming calls to the agents most qualified for those individual customer complaints. Help-desk software can help streamline your customer service process and reduce the number of times a customer has to repeat themselves.
3 . Complaint Resolution Mistakes: Lack of Follow-Up
Just as the nature of customer complaints varies, customers have varied ideas of what is acceptable regarding follow-up communication. Some customers will be happy to wait for a response, while others will expect ongoing communication and updates. If your support centre isn’t clear about its usual response times and capabilities, your customers may feel ignored and insulted.
Your customer service team should be dedicated to meeting the needs of clients, but simultaneously, your team needs the time and space to resolve any customer complaints before giving feedback. This is, in some ways, an extension of having an organised system - it is important to make your capabilities clear to your customers and give your customer service team the space to achieve a successful customer complaint resolution.
Tip: Gather enough feedback and data to see how long your employees need on average to respond to customer complaints and queries of different kinds. Use this to provide waiting time estimates for your customers.
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4 . Complaint Resolution Mistakes: Scripted Responses
No matter how refined your script is, customer complaints vary, and your customers can tell when the answers they receive have been scripted. Heavily scripted responses can be offputting and unhelpful. Each customer has unique needs and expectations and needs to be approached as such.
While scripts may assist your employees in following certain guidelines, they shouldn’t be instructed to follow them to a t. What applies to one client may not apply to another. Scripted employee feedback may come across as robotic and cause customers to feel uncared for. To successfully gain a more fluid complaint resolution keep an eye on how scripted your responses are to potentially disgruntled clients.
Tip: Instead, train customers to listen and tailor responses accordingly. Suppose they become unable to navigate a query. In that case, it is advisable that they contact a superior to discuss the matter with the customer on the same phone line rather than starting them on an endless call transfer process.
5 . Complaint Resolution Mistakes: Disorganisation
If your processes aren’t streamlined, none of your services or employees will have the foundation to perform well. When customer complaints or queries come in, there should be a clear process in place as to how to handle and respond to each situation. In addition to this, the work environment should be kept orderly, neat and clean so that any supplies needed are easy to find.
Here are some ways to combat disorganisation:
- Invest in folders and files
- Limit the number of office supplies employees has on their desks
- Have a dedicated space for bags
- Ensure that there is adequate storage
Furthermore, having a reliable, respectable and proactive manager for the space will ensure that the system continues to run smoothly and that it is easier to achieve a better complaint resolution rateTip: frequently track areas that require improvement in dealing with customer complaints, and act accordingly. Ask for customer feedback in the form of surveys and put measures in place to work on areas that need to be improved.
The Disadvantages of Poor Customer Service
If the aforementioned items bring to mind red flags for your customer service system, that may be the reason your business struggles to achieve a higher complaint resolution rate. While this may still be in its early stages, here are some disadvantages of poor customer service to beware of moving forward:
- Dissatisfied customers lead to lower loyalty and repeat business
- Negative comments spread and can harm your company’s reputation
- Poor customer service results in lost sales
- A disorganised system can lead to increased customer service-related expenses
- Dealing with high volumes of angry customers can negatively affect employee morale
- Dissatisfied employees may become unproductive
- Customers may choose the services of your competitors instead
When a business puts in the effort to provide high-quality services that improve internal complaint resolution rates, it pays off in the long run. With good customer service, clients are more likely to be satisfied with their experience and remember the business, perhaps even recommending the service to their friends. This can lead to increased loyalty, repeat business, and an influx of new clients. Subsequently, your business will likely see an increase in sales and a boost in employee morale and motivation.
Deal with Customer Complaints Professionally
Reliably outsource specialised help-service desk and escalation management services for your business with solverASSIST and gain a better customer complaint resolution rate.. Our services can help your company reduce costs, streamline business processes, and ultimately improve overall business performance and ROI. SolverASSIST offers free consultations, and tailored solutions suited to your business’s unique needs.
solverASSIST also offers technical support for your middleware, monitoring and management requirements, and other niche products. Our application services include linear, BI, financial application, and Salesforce support to get your company’s operations running smoothly.
Read our complete guide to escalation management to learn more, or contact us today and get your customer service system up to scratch.