Strategies for Turning Customer Complaints into Opportunities

Receiving a complaint about a product or service you have provided can be disappointing and challenging; however, customer complaints can also provide an opportunity for learning and growing. 

Complaints can also help you to identify and remedy knowledge and service gaps within your business. They also offer opportunities to build relationships with consumers. 

In this article we will discuss some key strategies for turning customer complaints into opportunities and the power of changing our mindset when we are faced with challenges. 

Embrace a Customer Service Mindset 

A customer-centric approach puts a customer at the heart of an interaction. This makes them feel valued and important. 

Each interaction that we have with a customer is an opportunity to create a positive and memorable experience. A customer service mindset puts customer satisfaction at the forefront of all business dealings. To foster a customer service mindset you need to be able to communicate clearly, show empathy and develop your emotional intelligence and listening skills. 

To provide really great customer service, sometimes a mindset shift is needed. For example, we need to stop viewing complaints as negative or inconvenient experiences. Similarly, we may also require a perspective shift, where we try to see the situation from the point of view of the customer rather than through the lens of the business.

Having a clear complaints procedure in place can help businesses resolve complaints more quickly and efficiently – if you notice gaps in your company’s complaints procedure, flag this immediately:

• Customers should be able to easily find out how to complain and who to complain to
• Contact information for customer service (email address, phone number, address, online contact form or webchat) should be easily available and accessible
• Employees should be well trained in customer service

Listen and Empathise

Complaints are usually driven by three key factors:

• We want sympathy
• We perceive an injustice has occurred
• We want to effect change

To begin resolving a customer’s complaint, first we need to gather all the information and consider their motivations. Only then can we begin to reach a conclusion. To do this we need to be able to listen and empathise. 

Unhappy customers can prove challenging and knowing how to deal with them is key to finding a resolution. Poorly handled complaints can lead to further upset, poor reviews and problems for businesses and employees. 

Consumers are actually driven by feeling rather than logic a lot of the time. When they are unhappy with a product or service, they often act emotionally because they feel they have been lied to, misled or taken advantage of in some way. It is important that, when faced with a customer who is expressing emotion, we take the time to listen to them and allow them to express their feelings. Only then can we start to look for an adequate solution. 

Do

• Acknowledge the customer’s feelings
• Practise active listening techniques
• View the situation from the customer’s perspective
• Overcome your biases
• Be intuitive
• Foster trust and genuine connections
• Use positive language
• Take responsibility
• Be proactive
• Stay calm and collected

Don’t

• Ignore complaints or brush people off
• Mirror a difficult or angry customer’s language or body language
• Try to direct blame or responsibility elsewhere
• Get defensive or take complaints personally
• Be reactive

Active listening and empathy help us to connect with others, especially when they are emotional, upset or facing challenges. 

Skills associated with active listening include:

• Pay attention
• Ask open-ended questions
• Listen without judgement
• Clarify
• Reflect
• Summarise/paraphrase
• Avoid interrupting
• Use open body language

Active listening can help to avoid conflict and misunderstanding, by making sure we get all of the key information that we need to understand, investigate and resolve a complaint. It can also help to build rapport and trust between people which is especially important if we want to turn customer complaints into opportunities for learning and growth. Active listening is also associated with showing empathy. 

When we show empathy, we recognise the emotions that other people are feeling and use this knowledge to consider their perspective on a situation. People who are very empathetic can use their skills to help people through challenging situations and offer direct solutions to their problems that will make them feel better. 

Empathetic skills include:

• Active listening
• Emotional intelligence
• Curiosity
• Being open minded/non-judgemental
• Self-awareness

Not everyone is naturally empathetic, but these are skills that can be learnt and strengthened. When it comes to showing empathy when dealing with unhappy customers, the most powerful tool available to us is the perspective shift. If we are able to take a step back and start seeing the situation from the customer’s perspective, it becomes easier to think about a solution without getting defensive or dismissive. 

Resolve Complaints Promptly and Effectively

The cornerstones of effective complaint resolution are:

• Transparency
• Honesty
• Accountability
• Communication

Customers want their issues addressed and resolved in a timely manner. Implementing a specific customer complaints procedure within a business can help staff manage and respond to issues and get help from senior colleagues when necessary. 

A complaints procedure or policy should outline:

• How to identify different types of complaints
• What the timeline is for responding to them
• The process for complaint handling including steps to take
• Who is responsible for dealing with customer complaints
• Acceptable resolutions

Having this type of plan in place and sharing it with your employees will streamline the complaints procedure, making it easier to deal with complaints and reach a resolution swiftly and effectively. 

Staff will also need to know:

• Who to escalate complex or unresolved complaints to
• Any relevant laws or legislation they need to act in line with
• How to follow up complaints and request feedback
• How to log the complaints they have dealt with

It is also good practice for managers to routinely review their complaints procedure and the work of their employees. If a particularly good exchange between an agent and customer is found, it can be used to train other staff on what to do. If a large number of complaints are going unresolved, this may indicate that further training or resources need to be allocated to frontline staff. 

Having a timeframe in place to respond to and resolve complaints is helpful because it sets out expectations for both parties. It also helps businesses to stay organised and on top of their customer support. Companies with confusing organisational structures where employees are unsure of their roles, or those that recruit inexperienced workers for cheap labour, often struggle to keep up with complaints and tend to provide inadequate service.  

Due to the nature of modern business, you may be dealing with complaints via various mediums including online (via live webchat, comment boxes on review sites or social media), in person, on the phone, by email or by post. You should always be aware (and make your staff aware) that much of this communication is public and it is important to be professional at all times:

• If you are communicating in writing, proofread your work and check for spelling and grammar issues – something poorly written looks unprofessional and gives the impression that you don’t care
• When speaking in person be aware of your tone, wording and body language – avoid tutting, eye-rolling, folded arms, raising your voice or using passive-aggressive phrases
• Keep in mind the exchanges you are having can affect how future customers view your business – keeping calm and polite in the face of an unreasonable customer can have reputational benefits
• Once a customer has vented their issues, try to focus on the resolution and conclusion of the matter rather than reinforcing their negativity
• Always try to end on a positive note

Learn and Improve

By reading and responding to customer feedback we can get an insight into what is going well in our business and what we can do better.

Each complaint is an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, our processes, our supply chain and, ultimately, the service that we provide. Rather than getting defensive about a complaint or seeing it as an attack, we can shift our mindset and ask ourselves ‘What can I learn from this?’ or ‘Next time, what can I do better?’ If the complaint is about quality, perhaps you need to look for a new supplier; if items are getting routinely lost in transit you may need to try out a different delivery service. 

People who have a growth mindset may find it easier to turn customer complaints into opportunities than those who have a fixed mindset. People with a growth mindset strive to improve and hone new skills, prioritising continuous learning, whilst people with a fixed mindset believe their skills and abilities are inherent and cannot be changed. 

A fixed mindset may read a customer complaint and feel despondent:

This customer has complained because our service is rubbish and that’s that. They won’t come back again.

A growth mindset might see the same complaint and think:

This customer has complained about our service. If they haven’t received the high standards we promise, why not? What happened? Let’s find a way to resolve this together because we appreciate their custom and don’t want to give them a bad experience. Let’s persuade them to give us another chance so we can put things right and show them how we really do things here!

Simply put, a fixed mindset often looks for reasons to support the idea that they can’t effect change and a growth mindset is looking for ways that they can. When faced with a problem, a person with a fixed mindset will give up easily and decide they have done enough, whereas a growth mindset is more likely to persevere and wonder what more they can do.

Ways to foster a growth mindset in customer service staff: 

• Encourage problem solving behaviour
• Empower staff with the authority and knowledge to deal with problematic situations
• Promote a culture of continuous learning at work
• Normalise going above and beyond and exceeding expectation

Foster Customer Loyalty and Advocacy

Loyal customers can become powerful advocates for your brand. By creating genuine and positive connections with your audience and customers, you will increase your:

• Reach
• Sales and revenue
• Positive ratings and reviews

Customers are significantly more likely to recommend brands that they know and trust. By taking a proactive and responsible approach to dealing with complaints you can start to build a reputation as a business that listens and cares. 

The ubiquity of online reviews and social media means that unprofessional or indifferent behaviour regarding a complaint can quickly go viral and reach thousands of people. This can lead to serious damage to your business’s reputation which can be very difficult to repair. However, if you have worked hard to foster customer loyalty and someone is speaking badly about your business online, previous customers are more likely to advocate for you and will view the customer as either a chronic complainer or an online troll.

Conclusion

Learning strategies for turning customer complaints into opportunities can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. It can also make working life more positive for employees and business owners. 

By using active listening techniques and showing empathy, we can start to get to the root cause of a customer’s issue and make a plan to find an effective solution within an acceptable timeframe. Customer complaints are inevitable, but they do not have to leave us with feelings of failure or negativity. By reflecting on our experiences of customer complaints, we can gain unique third-party insight into how our business looks to others. We can then use this knowledge to refine products, services and processes to achieve greater customer satisfaction.

Sometimes, feedback from a customer can highlight deep-seated issues within a business that the owner has failed to address. This insight can be used to inform decisions around further training, education and resources that are needed in order to support employees. 

Ultimately, the goal of any business that wants to succeed is to drive sales, deliver first-class customer service to satisfied customers and for their employees to feel proud of their workplace