Do you have customers that leave suddenly? You’ve been doing this outstanding job for them, lavishing them with excellent service and yet they’re gone without a word?
Something went wrong and you know nothing about it. No matter how successful your business is, you will always have scope for improvement. Best of all, you will always have complaining customers. Don’t deny the fact. Accept it, welcome it and then do something about it! If you can rectify a complaint over and above that customer’s expectations, you have a customer for life. If you brush the complaint under the carpet, think how much you have lost from the lifetime value of that customer – not to mention the negative publicity they will generate for your business.
Obviously, you can’t wait for something to go wrong. Your job is to find ways to get the client to complain. If they complain, you are getting feedback that is extremely valuable and is probably relevant for all your other clients too. Best of all, empowered with a complaint channel, an appreciated client will complain at every juncture, giving you the opportunity to fix the problem and regain their trust.
Yet most companies still detest complaints. They refuse to believe that any of their clients would leave them so they never ask for feedback. On the rare occasion that clients get mad enough to put it into words, it’s too late. Even then, a complaint is treated with a nuisance value.
Dealing with complaints
Encourage honesty. Ask your customer’s face to face if they are happy rather than relying on a postal feedback form. Do it regularly and have them know who then can complain to if anything goes wrong.
Complaining customers are always very precise. They eliminate the vagueness of feedback forms. Listen to them and act on their complaints immediately. It’s often not that they want to leave – they want to be wooed back. Fix the problem and then let them know that you’ve fixed it.
These customers are giving you free feedback that would cost a fortune to commission someone to collate, so reward them. They’ve been inconvenienced on top of getting a bad product or service. That inconvenience factor deserves payment in the form of a reward over and above just fixing the problem. Customers who are brought back from the brink are extremely loyal and extremely “noisy”. Treat them like the asset they are.
Remember that it costs eight times as much to get a new customer than it takes to keep an existing one. Keep them at all costs.
Rule 1 – The complaining customer is always right.
Rule 2 – When in doubt, refer to Rule 1!
You can also put a regular feedback strategy in place to ensure you are keeping in touch regularly with your customers. To find out more just ask!
