Most businesses are struggling to create an exceptional customer experience with their brands. Meeting customer expectations is not that easy, and most companies are always willing to do their best to please customers.
In this article, we discuss some of the ways you can positively deal with unhappy customers and keep them in your business.
Tip 1: What Is The Value Of The Complaint?
When you have an unhappy client in your business, this gives you that chance to learn what is not working correctly in your business. It allows you to transform the negative situation into a positive experience for a customer. Therefore, how you react to your customers can break or build your relationship with them when you find yourself in this situation. It also has an impact on your brand.
Instead of fearing to handle unhappy customers, you can use this chance to improve your products and services and focus more on building a lasting relationship with them and retaining the customers. When customers complain, it means they want you to improve on specific areas of your product or service.
According to a study by Esteban Kolsky, at least 91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers will simply churn. It means if customers are not complaining about the negative experience with your product, they are not likely to return to your business.
Tip 2: Listen To What Your Customers Have To Say
You can practice active listening if customers come calling your customer care team with a complaint. Nowadays, people use voice search to find the customer care numbers to contact a business. In that case, the first step is to make it easy for your customer to reach your support team. You can take the help of voice SEO to show your channels your customers can use to contact your business.
When you listen to your customers, you have that chance to concentrate on everything they are saying about your brand and what exactly is making them upset. Listen and absorb the message from every customer complaint while paying attention to the emotions behind the communication.
You should be there with the customer when they complain about your product or services and listen to them. Before you can respond to the inquiries by the customers, you should read it at least twice to understand. You want to focus more on the words they are saying and not the emotions behind the words.
Do not interrupt customers when they are speaking. Paraphrase what they say and show them that you have been listening to them all the time. Listening to your customers is one of the most effective ways to handle complaints in any situation.
Tip 3: Take The Help of Data
Data plays a crucial role in identifying the customer’s concerns. Nowadays, companies have access to lots of data. All they need is to hire a data analyst with a degree in data science to explore how they can provide value to the customers.
You should focus more on identifying the main problems that make the customer upset. If you don’t understand the customer’s issues, you can ask them a question for more clarity.
You can use data to improve the entire customer lifecycle. Data will offer rich insights about every customer so that you know what keeps them happy.
Tip 4: Be Empathetic And Apologize To Your Customers
Customers are human beings with emotions just like you. When you speak and say you are sorry, they are likely to feel okay. Start by acknowledging that you’ve made a mistake and you are fixing it. Show your customers that you are sorry when apologizing.
Don’t just say we are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Instead, you can go ahead to explain a bit about the issues and apologize at the end.
When you put out a thorough apology to your customers, it shows them that you understand what they feel and are willing to make changes. When explaining yourself, you should not drag too much. Try keeping the explanation short and move forward.
Tip 5: Mention The Solution To The Problem
Apart from listening to your customers and showing them that you care, you want to present a lasting solution to them. There are two ways to present a solution to your customers.
If you know what you can do to make your customer happy, then go ahead and tell them what you will do to win their heart back and correct the situation.
Also, if your customer needs some technical help, then you can provide them with a step-by-step guide that shows the solution. For instance, you can create a video by using a video maker software such as Invideo and share it with the customer.
If you don’t know the right solution, you can present it to the customer. You can give them the chance to resolve things independently. You should only do this if the customer has resisted your proposed solution.
Ask the customer to tell you what they think would be the right solution to the problem. You can say, “ If my solution does not fix this problem, I would like to know what your proposal is. If it’s within my power I’ll have it done as you wish, and if it’s not, we can agree on another solution that would favor both of us.”
Tip 6: Act And Follow Up
After agreeing with your customer on the solution to their complaint, you should now explain how you will take action. If you are talking to the customer on the phone, you can ask them to take your name and contact details. This assures your customer that they can hold you accountable if no solution is offered.
Follow up with the customer the next day after the issues have been resolved and ask them if they are happy with the solution you’ve provided. For this, you can use various methods like via phone call or directly send email to their inbox to get feedback.
Final Thoughts
Customer expectations are high in the world of e-commerce. No matter how a business tries to keep customers happy, things are more likely to go wrong in some cases. You want to know how to convince your customers, ‘apologize’, and promise them the best services so they come back.
To retain customers, businesses should know how to bounce back whenever they have issues with unhappy clients. Take the steps outlined in this article to deal with your customers if they are not happy with your products and services.
