Maintain Customer excellence by handling Complaints!
The most important factor for an organisation in building a long-term reputation for customer excellence is the way it handles complaints and queries. Effective tracking and analysis of customer and employee issues can bring great opportunities to not only increase customer loyalty and retention but also bring the customer to the heart of the organisation. Increasingly, customers are judging organisations based upon the handling of a problem or complaint.
Give me Contact !
The quest for 100% customer satisfaction is like the quest for most forms of perfection - a little unrealistic. Problems often happen because the environment in which your business operates changes with the changing wants and needs of customers, market regulation and so on.Any business should put processes in place to identify customer satisfaction, put problems right, deliver quality services and products and build better business relationships. The best will invest in effective complaint handling processes recognizing the return in terms of fully understanding the needs of customers, increased customer loyalty and retention, positive word of mouth advertising and free notification of potential service problems, product failures or non-compliance with regulations and legislation.
Most businesses encourage contact from both customers and staff in one form or another. The monitoring of contacts is vital for effective performance management and, ultimately, better products and services. You will receive suggestions, compliments, product and service enquiries and complaints.
Managing expectations can be a tricky business: set them too high and they're hard to meet, set them too low and undersell what you offer. From the consumer perspective, Exceed My Expectations is about sending consumers on an exciting journey that takes them from trust to loyalty, from expectation to delight. In forging an invisible but tenable bridge to the opposite side of the transactional equation, you prove that your company delivers on its original promise, and then goes above and beyond. Doing something out of the ordinary, even far more than necessary, proves again and again that your customers will get more than they pay for, or even anticipate, each and every time they do business with you.
Exceeding expectations encompasses things such as offering an apology before anyone even complains about a minor problem, being proactive rather than reactive, fixing those little things that aren't quite right, and making amends in big ways when even a small response would suffice
Attitudes to Complaining
The National Complaints Culture Survey 2000 gathered the opinions of consumers and a variety of businesses. The survey found that 44% of people will now complain all or most of the time when they encounter a problem with a service or purchased goods. Incidence of complaining in a business to business environment is greater than consumer complaints. An average of only 25-30% of business customers will not pursue a complaint compared to 56% of consumers not making the effort. Interestingly, consumers have a greater tendency to escalate a complaint to a manager or head office. Only 45% of consumers said they complain to the front-line – but 75% of business to business customers complain to a front-line member of staff. Often, a complaint to the front-line goes unrecorded – important information about a product or service is lost.
The number of complaints can also be affected by the perceived loss. A high loss can result in 75% of customers complaining and a low-loss can reduce the figure to 5% or less.Customers sometimes want written confirmation of action taken but 73% of people would like some personal contact by phone or face to face to quickly resolve the problem.
Survey 2000 found 58% of employees expressed dissatisfaction with the level of empowerment given to them to resolve a complaint. Employees expressed concern about being untrained in complaint handling and being left unsupported. Many said their organization actively discouraged them from resolving complaints. An unresolved complaint in a business to business environment could be particularly damaging to you business…
Complaints can increase customer loyalty ( or drive customers away.... )
Your business customers who complain are likely to be regular users of your services or products. A well-handled complaint can actually increase customer loyalty:Customers are more likely to use your services again or purchase further products in future (and also sing your praises).The use of 0800 numbers for reporting complaints increases customer reporting of problems but also shows your customers that you are sincere in wanting to know about problems
A well-handled complaint will also:educate a customer in the workings of your business,ensure that your customer will be easier to deal with in future contacts,be an opportunity for you to impress your customer with your sense of responsibility in business.
Remember the impact a poorly handled complaint can have on business. A customer experiencing difficulties in achieving a resolution is likely to spread bad press about your business.A dissatisfied customer tells 10 to 25 others about a bad experience. Internet customers are becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities for tarnishing your image following a poorly-handled complaint (making use of e-mail chat with colleagues and other business partners).A poorly handled complaint can create customers who are badly informed about your business,
feels as time-consuming or go elsewhere
Making sure customers complaint in most cost-effective way!
Successful companies today are the ones that revolve their business around their customers. They focus on adding value by designing processes such as technology, training and employee compensation systems to support a strategy of customer-centricity that penetrates all areas of the organisation, resulting in a concerted effort towards providing superior value.
If you want to manage your customer relationships, you need to understand their perspective. Voice of the Customer (VOC) research provides a structured means of doing so that can be used wherever you have significant contact with your customers. If you are interested in new product or service development, VOC can help identify and prioritize customer needs. If you are interested in fostering customer loyalty, VOC can help you identify the primary problems with your own products or services—and the advantages that drive customers to use you competition even when you have a competitive offering.
Ease of complaint reporting can be equally important in making sure that your customers complain in the most cost-effective way. If you have a complaint process that is difficult to access you will find that the process:
- only accessible to your most knowledgeable customers
- creates difficult customers who may: withhold or delay payment,
give up and go elsewhere, make successive (costly) contacts across your business ,misses out on vital information for your business .
The cost of winning new business compared to retaining existing business can be as high as 20 to 1. An effective complaint process will be far-reaching across your business - touching the parts that most other customer retention systems fail to get to! Your processes will be more customer-focused with customers aiding the business through quick reporting of possible problem areas. You will have a valuable source of information for flagging possible problem areas – ideal for feeding in to quality assurance processes and testing compliance with any relevant regulations and legislation.
When developing or reviewing a complaint process make sure you get the basics right. Easy access to the process is all important. You will need to consider:
- A free-phone help-line for reporting complaints
- Publicity - why not give information on how to complain on invoices or as an insert with contract documents
- Don’t limit customers in the ways they communicate problems - give fax and email contacts and consider the differing needs of customers in your particular market place - do you need to have a specific form on your web site for business to business customers to report problems?
Complaint as an Opportunity.
Communicate in clear terms – remember a complaint is an opportunity to educate a customer about your products and services. A complaint may highlight that a business partner is not using the full capabilities of a particular product – maybe the customer needs to purchase an additional add-in. A complaint is an opportunity for you to sell the benefits your business can provide. Poor communication will cause you to lose out.
Developing Measures for Customer Centered Goals
Customers are the heart of your business. A customer centric goal orients the efforts of your company around the buying desires of a specific segment or market. In order to operate your business in a customer centric manner, you must understand the measures of success for your business .
Your most profitable customers define success -
Ask your most profitable customers for details about what they consider a successful delivery of your service. Measure factors inside your company that contribute to reaching the customer definition.
Focus on specific solutions of value to the customer -
When customer definitions of success are not available or unclear, measure the efforts solving specific problems. Orient your efforts to solve these challenges more efficiently, more completely, and in less time.
Use short but regular surveys to collect details. -
Small surveys are invaluable to developing a clear picture of customer desires and concerns. Use your findings to improve existing services while orienting your focus on what customers will purchase.
Identify what results a customer desires - By measuring factors that contribute to customers' objectives, you will know exactly how you benefit buyers. Use this insight to describe every product as if it were a critical factor to reach those desired results.
Document changes in customer desires over time. -
Use measures that inform you of changes in customer desires. Track what triggers these changes and you will become more flexible and be able to solve the right problem at the right time.
Work through the point-of-purchase from the customers' experience. -
Understand how your customer perceives a purchase from before, during, and after the interaction. Look for triggers that initiate action or identify a need.
Ask, "Does this contribute to a positive customer experience?" -
Every process of your company should advance customers’ objectives, if it does not; it is not advancing your own objectives. Measure those things that reduce distractions, placing more efforts on improving the customer relationship.
Focus measuring relationships not transactions. -
Re-evaluate your current measures refining those who just measure short-term gain without considering the long-term value of repeat customers. Calculate customer lifetime value, acquisition costs, and return on retention efforts.
Determine how you will test measures early in the process. -
Your first measures will not be the right measures, know how you will determine this before investing too much time or money. Test every measure against control efforts to verify its usefulness.
Only measure those things useful to improving experience. -
Every measure must advance your customers’ experience, do not waste time measuring things you are not going to use. Ask, "What do we do with this measure?"—require a clear and logical answer.
Develop measures specific to customer segments. -
Each customer segment will have identifying characteristics that validate a buyer's inclusion to that group. Analytical measures can improve your ability to qualify accounts for particular products or demands.
Your measures of customer centric efforts are unique to your organization and contribute specifically to your business objectives. They should wrap around your customers’ desires in respect to your unique value; in fact, advances in customer relationship should differentiate your organization from competitors.
In this era of seemingly endless options, with an infinite number of stores and brands and choices, companies possessing an historical relationship with customers and who have provided generation after generation with products and services are ahead of the game in maintaining and extending consumer loyalty.
inspiration is the ultimate form of communion between a company and its consumers. Brand survival depends on creating an emotional bond with consumers, and the companies that successfully establish this bond are the ones that map the products, services, experiences, or ideals that resonate with their customers. Without doubt, creating long-term and meaningful connections with consumers is far from easy. While people cry at commercials featuring newborn babies or reunited relatives, and kids get excited about the latest toy from a blockbuster movie, the brands that become part of customers' lives evoke far more passion and loyalty than simple tearjerker advertising or tie-in marketing.
Beyond all the hype about delighting customers by meeting and exceeding their expectations, is the simple reality that most businesses just don't come close to knowing what customers care about. Today's consumers expect more and tolerate less, in part because they have so many options. With the ever-expanding explosion of information readily available and easily accessible via the Internet, modern consumers are able to research and comparison shop an endless array of both products and services from the comfort of their own homes or offices. Welcome to the age of the demanding consumer.
Ten Demandments for turning the most demanding consumers into the most delighted customers are:
- Earn my trust through respect, integrity, advocacy and quality.
- Inspire me through immersive experiences, motivating messages and related philanthropy
- Make it easy with simplicity, speed and usefulness.
- Put me in charge of making choices and give me control
- Guide me with expert advice, education and information
- Give me 24/7 access, from anywhere, at anytime.
- listen, learn and study me, the real consumer, not just data.
- Exceed my expectations with uncommon courtesies and surprising services.
- Reward me with points programs, privileges of access or other worthwhile extras.
- Stay with me with follow through and meaningful follow-up.
