Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Customer Experience Management: How Shall You Handle Complaints Positively?

 There is no such thing as “good customer” (without complaint) or “bad customer” (with complaint), and there is significant difference between one time customer and life-time customer.

Being customer centric  is at the top business agenda of every forward-thinking organization, however, walking the talking is not always easy, how do you handle customers’ complaints, how shall you transform the customers with complaint into the loyal customers? How can you improve your products and services to optimize customers’ overall experience and life-time value?   


Complaints should always be viewed as an opportunity to make a positive difference - managing a complaint well helps to encourage loyalty and advocates for your business. Customers who raises complaints are those who wants to use the products or services despite something went wrong. If properly addressed these customers remains loyal for life time. So, you should always treat customers with complaint as loyal customer who gives your company the valuable feedback to continue improving products and service. Customers complain because they want the company to improve. Loyal customers become an integral part of an organization, and complains should be taken as a step towards improvement.


Customers with complaint can always be the loyal customers if their feedback have been handles properly. This includes an engaging interaction that is personalized to the customer, a high level of product knowledge and a true solution to their need (not just a list of today's promotions). The goal  is to build long-term customers, not just an additional sale today, good service has previously been given over and over again, and then something goes wrong, your customer will often be as anxious as you to get it put right.It is a very subtle shared responsibility. How do you handle complaints makes significant differences. Often times these complaints if handled promptly and properly become a catalyst for additional sales revenue or service improvement. Once you resolve the customers concern and have made them happy they will stick with you, and they are more receptive to spending even more with you because they like the way you responded to their concern. And if these complaints are dealt with promptly and the solution communicated timely. These complainants can then become your best advocates.


Social interaction with customers. The latest digital technologies such as social and mobile provide more effective channels to interact with customers, and handling customers’ complaints properly is not nice to have, but must have because customers now have the “power” to broadcast their complaint and damage the company’s reputation with only a few clicks. In addition, proactively communicate with customers, and getting feedback from purchasers, while it has its own challenges, it is an easier step than understanding why someone came in and didn't buy. But adding online chatter across channels can add a much needed dimension to the customer journey analysis--it's just a matter of having the right tools to bring meaning to all the noise, and capture signals even before someone complains.  Customer engagement is crucial to deliver personalized experience. Ensuring you are delivering a consistent experience won't leave the customer guessing what level of experience they may receive on his/her next visit. Although finding ways to "WOW" a customer can excite them for that one visit, truly engaging with her/him will make that customer feel important and allow you to personalize the experience to her/him.

There is no such thing as “good customer” (without complaint) or “bad customer” (with complaint), and there is significant difference between one time customer and life-time customer, and the goal for effective customer experience management is to improve the personalized customer experience, and transform more customers to the loyal and long time customers, appreciate their feedback, reward their loyalty and build intimate customer relationship via seamless interaction and engagement.  

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