The natural reaction of a person who works in a company, an executive and even a business owner is to become defensive in the face of customer complaints or any other person whose activity affects them and in some cases, even worse, censor or distance themselves from those who present complaints to us; nothing could be more wrong as a strategy.
In fact, having an open attitude towards complaints, both internal and external, will, as we will see, give a strategic opportunity and a series of advantages for those who work in a company or for those who run a business.
Opportunities in complaints
Complaints are actually, as one author said, a gift from the one who gives them to us and we must treat them as such. In that sense, when you receive a gift from someone what you do is thank them, and we should do the same in the business world.
A complaint is a gift since it gives us several opportunities:
- Have fast, cheap and efficient information What are the processes in which we are failing the client, whether internal or external.
- Us provides information of which people could be treating the customer poorly or making mistakes in the service process
- Avoid, these times of social networks, that the client, worker or whoever go to other media or publish against us.
- Allows us adjust our processes, services or products to the client's needs, since the complaint processes give us an opportunity to be better with the client and/or improve the products or services that are defective.
How to manage customer complaints
To establish a policy for receiving complaints received and not reject them, you must first talk to the staff at front desk and prepare them so that they are not only able to quickly report customer complaints or annoyances (which data us and when it is repeated, it gives us a problem to solve).
This policy It also allows our staff to have a different layout with customers who complain.
The complaint will become valuable information and may even be rewarded based on their sensitivity, then the attitude towards complainers will be completely different in our staff.
It is important that instead of running away from the client or person who complains or defending themselves against complaints with excuses, they get involved in them and report their occurrence; this is definitely gold dust for any organization.
Customer service culture
Set up a reward mechanism for complaining customers and information resulting from them and you will begin to put a customer service culture throughout your organization.
Our staff must be made aware that if the client complains, it is not necessarily because they have something against the company or against the staff themselves, But there is indeed a pain that has not been mitigated or a process that has been poorly done and you have every right to express your opinion about it.
If we also reinforce that it is better for them to complain to us than for them to complain in networks, the press or leave without giving us information about our poor service to the competition, it is something that can be reversed in our favor.
Find where we are failing
Furthermore, it may allow us to find the processes in which we are failing recurrently to be able to resolve them and also to train our people to serve us empathically until they can be resolved by the company.
The complaint cannot stop there, it has to lead us to act, to improve, to implement actions that will ensure that the complaint does not occur again. The complaint is a roadmap that would lead us inexorably to improvement.
A complaint is a gift; Sometimes we don't like the present that someone gives us but we should always know how to say thank you. The same thing happens in the business world, we must thank the customer who complains and thank you, above all, for having clients; When there are no complaints it means that there are no clients or that the clients left with others, because complaints will always exist.
In EIP, we have the Master in Financial Management, Accounting and Management Control, where you will train to lead the financial-fiscal management of companies using the necessary technology for this.
