If a complaint is a gift, what do you call it if no one’s complaining? Should you settle for the old axiom that “no news is good news”? Not a good idea. It may be foolish to assume that silence from your customers is a good thing. So what should a company do? Make it easy for your customers to give you honest, regular feedback and then make sure you respond to them. It’s not just what you do when you get a complaint, it’s what you do about the complaint that allows you to keep and grow your client base. If you encourage customers to speak out, be prepared to respond to what they say.
Here are eight tips to add to your checklist:
1. Encourage your customers to become partners. Underscore the fact that both of you can and should work together to make the relationship more productive.
2. Respond to all customer complaints professionally and courteously. Ensure you respond to client complaints politely, avoiding surly or sarcastic responses.
3. Make sure your responses are direct and professional. Give specific and realistic feedback about what the next steps will be in response to a customer’s complaint. For example, will you research why the problem happened and how it can be fixed? Will you discuss it with your staff? And when will you get back to them? Will it be in writing, by phone or by e-mail?
4. Use what’s working well as a model to change what needs to be improved. Pay attention to positive comments too, repeating the actions that lead to that positive feedback. In this way, you will end up with a client-driven solution.
5. Suggest the solution. If a client doesn’t like the way things are going now, suggest other ways they might handle similar situations. Then dig deeper to find out if using one of these alternatives would work better for them.
6. Set a reasonable time-frame for the resolution. Once a client feels safe enough to complain, make sure you have an agreement with them that includes a timeline for a response.
7. Ensure you’re including the right people. If youwant to make constructive changes, details about the problem need to be discussed with the right people on your staff.
8. Respond with a thank you. If a customer opens up with a complaint, what should they expect in return? First and foremost is a thank you. Thank them for being vocal, and thank them for helping you improve the way you do things. Then recap what you heard about the problem to ensure that everyone involved heard it the same way. Lastly, they deserve an honest assessment of how doable any solutions are. The bottom line is this: no news is usually not good news. Cultivating honest and involved relationships with customers is not always easy, but it means they will feel safe delivering complaints that you treat as gifts, not time bombs.