Five Steps to Handle Customer’s Online Complaint
Cut throat competition, multiple product choice, deals & discounts; in today’s market economy, it is a tough task to acquire customers and sustain them for a return purchase / influence prospective customers. As a result, post sales service has emerged to be the most crucial element in an organization’s sales funnel.
Below are the steps for an effective complaint handling mechanism.
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Be Prompt – For a brand it is extremely important to reach out to the complaining customer/s quickly else an open concern may spread & built a conversation among customers resulting into more negativity for the brand. Using marketing automation tools, brands can track & reach to the customers on a real time basis.
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Acknowledge the Complaint – The first step before initiating any discussion with the customer is to acknowledge the complaint, politely & humbly with an assurance for an early resolution. This will give customer first sign about brand’s customer centeric approach
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Take Conversation Offline – The second step is to take the concern offline. Any online discussion with an unsatisfied customer will fetch more eyeballs and sentiments. Understand the customer’s concern / grievance patiently from customer’s prospective. Don’t put your internal challenges (like unavailability of product in stock, lack of manpower etc) as an excuse. Rather, give customer an opportunity to drive the conversation.
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Be Personalize in your Response – This step is applicable for both online & offline response mechanism. Generally, brands sent templated responses to all the customers irrespective of the nature of the concern / grievance which is actually a bad practice and should be avoided.
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Be Time Bound – It is important to resolve the concern on a time bound manner based on the nature of the business / product. Example for a brand like Dominos Pizza, company can’t take a week to resolve the concern but a Bank may take longer time to settle a dispute. Try to keep in touch with the customer till final resolution
