How well does your company respond to customers complaints? It is a known fact that the way a business responds or react to a customer complaint can either convert a customer to a buying one for life (Loyalty) or a bad word of mouth publicity for the firm concerned. Research shows that 95% of customers will buy again from a business when they believe and felt that their complaint has been successfully resolved. In addition, customers in this category will equally tell an average of about five people about the good treatment they received from the company. The idea here is to have your front-line people well versed in the art of active, emphatetic and reflective listening.
Here are four ways to take advantage of the opportunity:
- Listen without interrupting, then restate the problem as you understand it (reflective listening). In doing this, you alleviate any misunderstandings as to what needs to be done.
- Apologize and let the customer know what time frame it will take to resolved the problem . Be very careful here, so you don't compound the situation by overstating your ability. It is imperative that you let customer know when they can expect a solution. As an added edge, you can either meet or exceed the customer expectations.
- Communicate. It is very important that you consistently stay in touch with the customer-- A phone call or two lets the customer knows you're handling the case. The overriding commonsense here is, a customer will stay patient longer if they're confident you're truly on the case.
- Do not invite customers to put their complaints in writing. By requiring and asking customers to put their complaints in writing, this will excallate and not diffuse the customers' anger.
Overall, it is very essential and critical for a company to train its front-line people in active, emphatetic, and above all, how to listen to the customer without interrupting them but to confirm by restating the problem as you understand it (reflective listening).
J.Greg Gimba, a Global Business & Marketing Consultant, Professional Speaker in Business to Business Marketing, Strategic Global Marketing, Market Action Planning, Customer Cultivation/Retention, Multi-Cultural&Diversity (Inclusion) Training. Greg can be reached at Anet@worldnet.att.net
J.Greg Gimba
Managing Partner
Anet Consulting Group,Inc.
E-mail: anet@worldnet.att.net
http://www.anet-cgroup.com
http://www.trainingforum.com/speakers/jggimba.html
Phone:1+/904/426-5194
Fax:1+/904/426-8589
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