Understanding Customer Complaints
Think of a complaint as an intangible asset. Be grateful someone has told you, rather than voted with their wallet, never to place another order. A complaint identifies an issue, perhaps with your product, employees, or internal processes. By hearing about the issue, it can be investigated and hopefully remedied.To err is human. The best advice one particular mentor gave me, many years ago was "Mistakes will happen: it's how you handle the news that counts."
Understand what can go wrong in handling customers' complaints. Turn customer complaints to your advantage. Gain insight into frameworks that will help you recognise and avoid bad practices.
You cannot handle complaints if you do not know about them. Step one is to ask for complaints. Ask at every opportunity: include in every written contact with customers by including suitable boiler-plate text in templates:
- Responses to RFQs, contracts and statements of work.
- Invoices, delivery notes and picklists
- Responses from the support team
