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Why Do Your Customers Complain? (Part I)
Robert Warlow
Small Business Success
Ever heard of
www.clik2compliants.co.uk? No? Then good! This is just one of the
growing number of sites which are run for dissatisfied customers to publicly
air their complaints about bad service. See your name posted on these sites
or get contacted by them and you know you have a problem!
How can you
prevent your business from becoming 'feature of the week'? Of all the skills
small business owners need these days, the one least practiced is the
ability to step back and look at your business from the customer's
perspective. Having an effective complaint handling process is important but
that is the equivalent of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted
– it's too late, your customer has already suffered.
It's more
effective for you to know what your customers could potentially
complaint about and put it right before it happens.
So what are the
common reasons for customer complaints? Mark Bradley of Customer Service
Network (www.customernet.com),
which facilitates in benchmarking, improving processes and implementing
improvements to help reduce customer complaints, says,
"Financial loss
is the obvious reason but the rest can be split into operational and
emotional reasons."
In this article
we will look at some of the operational issues within your business which
could give your customers cause to complain. Take a look at these and
examine each part of your business. How do you stand up?
"You didn’t
do what you promised."
When did you
last review your advertising material or web site? Do they contain service
promises which sounded great at the time but have since been forgotten? For
example, do you promise to deliver within 24 hours but changes in processes
have met that is no longer possible? No one may have complained yet but
sooner or later someone will.
"Your
product didn't do what it's supposed to do."
When did you
last undertake a quality check of your product? Random checks can help weed
out poor quality workmanship before a customer spots it. When buying your
stock or finished item do you test it?
"You’re
never open when I need you."
9 to 5, 5 days
a week may have been acceptable when you first started out, but is this
still what the customer wants? Check with your customers – they may want to
open later and close later.
"It’s a long
time before someone answers the phone."
Hanging on the
phone while it rings and rings is very irritating. It conjures up images of
staff sitting there drinking coffee and chatting; not the impression you
want to portray and not the way to put customers in a buying mood! Do your
staff understand the importance of the phone being answered promptly?
"Whenever I
ring in and get transferred to another person I often get cut off."
Have your staff
been trained in getting the best out of your phone system? Do all staff have
a handy list of extension numbers to avoid annoying 'sorry wrong department'
answers? Ask a friend or business colleague to ring in and take note of what
happens – good and bad.
Mark Bradley
says, "We usually encounter a number of interesting correlations that
fundamentally prove that operational accuracy leads to customer
satisfaction." So take some time to look at your business from the
customer's perspective and you should be able to stop customer complaints
before they hit your desk.
In the next
article we will look at the emotional cause of complaints, in other words,
things your staff do to wind your customers up!
© Robert
Warlow
Small Business
Success
www.smallbusinesssuccess.biz
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