Handling Customer Complaints

Overview:

Effective customer complaint handling is one of the most important aspects of providing excellent customer service. Customers who complain are offering the organization a chance to identify and resolve problems, demonstrate excellent service, and keep loyal customers. The objective of this workshop is to help participants handle customer complaints and difficult customers successfully.

At the end of this training course trainees will be able to view customer complaints as opportunities, identify problems that prompt complaints, handle complaints effectively, and satisfy customers who complain.

Course Outline:

Why “Handling Customer Complaints Training” Matters

• Customer complaints alert organizations to ways to improve products, services, procedures, and attitudes toward customers.
• Resolving customer complaints successfully often creates loyal customers.
• Almost all customer complaints are fixable. It’s estimated that 95% of customers that have their complaints resolved will remain customers and keep doing business with the organization.
• Only about 4 percent of customers complain. Most-96%-”just silently take their business elsewhere.
• Dissatisfied customers tell as many as 20 other people about their experience

Course Objectives

• Gather information, even in a tense situation, in order to deal with the real problem. 
  
• Defuse customer anger and build rapport.
• Communicate with confidence and assurance.
• Maintain professionalism under pressure.
• Create customer satisfaction.
• Provide a solution.
• Monitor and analyse complaint levels and identify remedial action.

The Complaint – How to Control It

• The damage complaints can do to your organisation
• Making sure the complaint does not escalate
• Accepting customer feedback graciously
• Re-building the customer relationship
• The various techniques required to handle written, telephone and face-to-face complaints

Communication that Works

• Developing the right attitude – feeling good, thinking positively 
• How to sound confident, caring and helpful – building rapport
• Active listening
• Gathering the information
• Checking understanding
• Successful telephone techniques – the do’s and don’ts

Remaining Calm – Not Over-reacting

• Recognising how serious is the customer’s concern
• Defusing a difficult situation
• Empathise with the complaint – don’t join in the criticism
• Gaining the customer’s respect
• Identifying common ground

Creating Satisfaction from Dissatisfaction

• Ensuring the customer feels listened to 
• Let the customer know what can/will be done about their complaint
• Taking responsibility for the successful outcome
• Getting across your point of view – re-building commitment
• Monitoring complaint levels versus performance standards
• Identifying processes to deal with the most common objections
• Influencing the organisation – collectively looking to avoid future problems

Personal Development- Creating an action plan

Target Audience

• Executives / Teams who are in contact with customers either face-to-face or over the telephone and need the essential skills to handle customer complaints with confidence and assurance.