Firstly some guidelines around effectiveness. While not an exhaustive list, it serves as a qualitative accompaniment to this step by step procedure.

A general guide for effectiveness

• It’s a good idea to have the same operator handling the complaint. Getting bounced around on the phone is never good and I especially hate having to repeat myself. It also creates an opportunity of ownership of the issue to occur.

• Complaints should be recorded in a call management system or CRM and repeated complaints will be flagged to the business to induce action. Someone needs to be analysing these.

• Have a forum to share war stories about complaint handling. It is stressful enough for people as it is handling these. John A. Goodman talks about this in his Customer Experience 3.0 book and calls them “victory sessions”. It creates an opportunity to receive peer and supervisor recognition.

• Fix it fast. Enough said!

• Train the front line to understand the type of complaint so they can triage the impact of it. They need to understand how serious an issue is, for instance, if it is a media issue.

• Train the front line to understand the types of complainers and how they behave.

• Empower the front line to be able to compensate/refund based on scenarios. This should happen without having to go to a supervisor. Otherwise, it undermines the front line ability to help people and is a demotivator.

Steps to do so

1. Apologise and acknowledge the issue. Thank them for bringing this to your attention and for having the opportunity to fix and improve the service/product offering.

2. Reaffirm company values and communicate what the standard is.

3. Communicate how the situation will be handled and confirm that this is what is expected

4. Clarify how and when you will follow up to set expectations for resolution.

5. Most importantly, follow through and deliver on the promise or else there is a good chance the customer will be gone forever.

6. Depending on the severity of the complaint, provide an explanation on how this will be mitigated in the future. It’s a good opportunity to show you are taking it seriously and preventing any further problems. I’ve found this to have real impact in a positive way on the relationship.

Please leave your comments below if you found any of this useful or other methods that work for you.