Dealing With Customer Complaints

Whether you're selling products or services, sooner or later, an angry customer will come in to file a complaint about your "substandard" product or "lousy" service. What do you do?

If it's a product, make sure that the customer has brought in the defective product with him. If not, have a service representative inspect the product at the customer's residence. (Now I'm sure a lot of you are asking, do you charge the customer for your serviceman's transportation expenses from your office to the customer's residence? I hope you have enough good sense NOT to charge your customer for that kind of expense.) Ask the customer what is wrong with the product and LISTEN to what he is saying. Then ask permission to check the product IN HIS PRESENCE. If the item needs to be brought back to the office for repair or replacement, ask him to fill-out a consent form that doubles as a job order/replacement form. Once you have fixed the item or has the replacement unit ready, call your customer and inform him that you will be delivering the product to his residence. Make sure that you demonstrate that the product is working perfectly well in his presence and ask him to try it out while you are still there. Before leaving, make sure that the customer signs a release form stating that you have already dealt with his complaint and that he is satisfied with your response or action. A small reminder here: Make sure that you address the complaint within a specific period of time, say, two weeks. Make sure that the customer knows that you need two weeks to address or fix his problem. And make sure that you finish addressing his problem in LESS than two weeks.

For service businesses, customer complaints vary from poor service, plain rudeness or dishonesty of certain employees. You ask the customer what is wrong, you write down the complaint. If it's poor service, obviously you have to ask your employees to do it right and make it right. If it's rudeness, you ask your employee to apologize to the customer in your presence, and refer the matter to the HRD for proper disciplinary action. If it's dishonesty, refer the matter to the HRD so that they can initiate a proper investigation on the employee's alleged dishonesty and initiate termination proceedings if necessary. In this case, you advise the customer of the due process involved and promise the customer that he will be informed in writing of the outcome of the investigation and proceedings which was caused by his complaint.

Dealing properly with a customer's complaint can help build your company's reputation in after sales support. This is a key consideration in the mind of any customer: the knowledge that if something goes wrong with the item or service purchased, the company is honorable enough to correct the error at a reasonable time and at no additional cost to the customer.