Complaint Management - Defence or Brand Building

The psychology of venting one's spleen can be turned into an opportunity and that's the whole point of allowing clients the time and place to complain and hopefully receive a satisfactory resolution. Problems resolved and customers converted to a state of satisfaction produce many rewards. The first being a satisfied client who will boast of the excellent service and result provided by the company to others, not just because of the complaint made. This avoids the industry statistic of one unhappy client telling at least 6 others not to do business with you!

In order to handle complaints a company must train CSRs to be resilient to and automatically tolerant of rude and obnoxious behavior. Make it like a game with rehearsed and obvious moves. Indeed, to listen whilst remaining calm and measured is the first way a CSR can command respect and attention. Saying very little, except to ask more of the client to extract as much of the pain and frustration as possible, will invariably diffuse the situation. Once the client is all out of wind, the CSR can address the problem by taking details and providing, where possible, an instant solution, or at least one that will provide a satisfactory conclusion, albeit may not be the ideal or perfect ending. Where such a solution is not forthcoming or impossible to deliver, there must be an automatic facility to resolve at another time and the facts available so the CSR can inform the client of the expected date and time of the resolution. This is critical as once you begin to manage the client, not managing them provides a worse scenario of loss of loyalty than the first encounter.

Automated email/web based complaints and service requests are another annoyance. In my case I rarely have had satisfaction from automated responses usually accompanied with long or overdue delays. Invaribaly, I don't get responses to my requests, or when I do, they're usually inappropriate, implying that what I have written has not been understood, or it's been interpreted and processed by either a moron or a computer! CS teams ought to be set up to call back users of web based service requests when they have not been satisfactorily answered within a couple of days or when promised, or if the client sends a second, often more terse request.

There should also be a method and means to record all complaints and the associated reasons. These should be correlated against data such as age range, sex, product/service, reason, campaign, media, etc., in order that a clear understanding of trends and likely expectations going forward. Customer service isn't just about always "making people happy" all the time. The real test is making them happy when they start out being unhappy. CSRs must be trained and or hired where they can in fact undertake the latter more often than the former. An organisation needs this quality within its CS teams to act as not only a defence barrier, but also as a forward post for brand building.