When drawing up a customer complaints policy, you should consider including:
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The definition of complaint
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What the process is for making a complaint
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How the complaint will be recorded and tracked
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How the complaint will be dealt with and resolved
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Time scales for responding to and resolving complaints
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Any additional points from this guide which may be useful.
Make sure all your staff understand the complaints policy so that they can deal with customers and/or direct them to the relevant person. A customer having a whinge on the phone may be seen by one employee as a complaint, while another might just see it as part of their day-to-day job to pacify the client and decide not to report it. If you’re introducing a new complaints policy, it’s worth getting all staff together to make sure everyone understands how, where, when and why to report complaints. Don’t frustrate, confuse or annoy customers by making them chase different people in different departments; this will only make it harder for you to glean the information you need to satisfactorily resolve the complaint. Finally, make sure you provide the customer with your full name and contact details, so that s/he can chase up a response to the complaint, if necessary.
3. Ask the right questions Before you can start to turn customers’ complaints into sales, you need to understand what’s contributing to their dissatisfaction. It might sound obvious, but businesses often trip themselves up by not asking enough – or the right – questions to get to the core of the problem. Let the customer give you all the information you need to understand the issue. This can have the added benefit of giving the customer time to calm down. A customer may have initially contacted you about a faulty product, but when he called he couldn’t get through to the right person. When he finally got through to someone he was twice as frustrated as when he first dialled your number. It’s important to ask open-ended questions and be prepared to listen. Sometimes, you may have to delve deep to identify the key issue and may even find other problems along the way that you need to resolve.. The most important question to ask after you’ve listened to the customer’s complaint is ‘how can I fix the problem?’ This simple question will go a long way towards helping you to resolve the issue. Firstly, the customer will realise that you’re serious about the complaint, which can help to calm down an irate client. Secondly, it could save you from having to think of a solution to the problem yourself. Finally, it will often transpire that what the customer would like you to do is actually quite simple and easily achievable. Often, customers will feel much better after having ‘unburdened’ themselves and you may not even need to take any further action.
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