India Broadband Forum

Transformer

If your business doesn't have a way for customers to complain about the business, perhaps this article will help you to set up and implement some.

A customer needs to believe that if he has a legitimate complaint concerning a product he has just paid money for, then he should be treated in a respectful, understanding manner. Many companies used to go by the old standby"the customer is always right." In our day and age now, it is not so black and white. Our society does not have the respect for each other as we used to have. So, saying that I will attempt to tell you how to get your customers complaints without making your company or the customer feel they have been mistreated or disrespected in any way.

There are several good ways to get a customer to voice their complaints without having to talk directly to a sales person or office manager, thus keeping costs to a minimum. However, at least one person must keep track of these complaints so as to deal with the problems in a timely manner.

One of the ways is to set up a postcard complaint system, where the customer gets a postcard with each appointment he has in your business, that allows them to mail you back any complaints or problems they are experiencing. It is efficient and many customers use these on a regular basis for small things that do not need immediate care.

Another is a toll free number that a customer can call if they are having problems. It can be manned by a representative or it can be made fully automatic so the customer leaves a message, and then gets a call back from someone that listens to all of the complaints and tries to establish a repo with the customer to fix their problems. These calls must be taken care of as soon as possible and not left on a machine for several days before the customer gets an answer.

There is also the basic complaint department where the customer complains in the service area of the business. This is fine if they do not cause a scene by being too loud or angry over whatever the problem is.

Out of all of these different systems for complaints, I would think the best and most efficient one would be to have the customers make out complaint forms and mail them in. There is no need to get into an argument with the customer if they are upset, or to have them causing a disturbance in the service areas of your business. They would have a few days to cool off before hearing someone on the telephone talking to them about whatever the problem is also. Your company would also have a record of the problem in writing because the customer would have to write down the problem on the postcards. Your service personnel will be able to check out the problem before calling them back. Many customers would probably be able to work out the problems they were trying to complain about if they took a few days to figure it out.

When using a toll free number, your customers can leave a message, either nice or nasty, and you can then call them back or try to fix the problem or find out more information, before you call them back. This would be appropriate also, but you must have a big enough memory so that ten calls do not exceed the limit for your voice mail box. It would only inflame the situation if a customer were to call to complain and then be told they could not leave a message because the message box was full. Also, somone would have to be able to answer these calls in a timely fashion within a day or two at the most.

If you use the tried and true customer complaint department in your place of busiess, try to keep it in a nice, peaceful, area. Preferably away from the rest of the customer service areas so the other customers do not get upset by the unhappy customers. Some people cannot be helped no matter what the situation and you must be ready to handle people like this also. There is no one person in the world that can make everyone else in the world happy. Someone will always complain about something.

The best thing you can do for any and all complaints, is to teach the employees to LISTEN to the customers. Many times an employee will not listen to all a customer has to say because they think they know what the customer is talking about. If the employee would just listen to the customer. and then try to help, a lot of aggravation would be stopped.

If your business is important to you and the people that work for you, then your customer complaints should come first and be taken care of in a timely manner so everyone is happy.