Posted by Andy Cullwick, director of marketing at Legal Futures Associate First4Lawyers
Cullwick: It’s how you deal with the complaints that matters
How does your business deal with complaints?
In today’s digital age, where review sites and social media platforms abound, it’s never been easier to vent, and negative feedback can have serious consequences.
It’s now commonplace for people to read reviews before buying a product or service, and would you be willing to risk it when others have had a less than favourable experience?
Never mind that you don’t know these unhappy customers or that people are generally much quicker to complain than they are to praise. Never mind that not all complaints will be justified (as a wise man once said, you can’t please all of the people all of the time).
The seed of doubt has been sown, the damage has been done. Repeat that a few times and it can be disastrous for businesses.
Communication
The number one cause of complaints is usually frustration caused by poor communication, typically because expectations have not been met or managed.
Take Oasis and the ‘dynamic pricing’ debacle, which saw the cost of in-demand tickets for sale on Ticketmaster more than double once some fans got through to the front of the queue. The fact that this was a possibility had not been communicated well, arguably not at all, and hundreds of complaints have since been made to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Another example is from the Financial Ombudsman Service, where recent data shows that complaints about motor insurance have hit a five-year high.
I’d hazard a guess that a significant number are because the deadlines given to customers – for repairs to be done or payouts to be received for instance – have been missed and, worse still, customers have not been made aware of the delays.
Having been on the receiving end of this myself, I can honestly say that being told nothing is happening (and the reason why) is better than being told nothing at all.
Best practice
No business should expect to be perfect and it’s likely that you will get some dissatisfied customers, but it’s how you deal with the complaints that matters.
Ignoring the problem may be tempting but it’s unlikely to make it go away, meaning tackling it head-on is the best course of action. Having a robust complaints processing system – including escalation points – is vital in ensuring that all channels, such as review sites and customer satisfaction surveys, are monitored so that all complaints are captured, and none slip through the net.
Respond in a timely fashion (waiting for a response is only likely to increase the complainant’s frustration), find out the details and commit to investigating what went wrong, why, and what can be done to resolve the issue. Give them a deadline by which you will respond and meet it.
If the complaint is valid, look at anything that could be changed to stop the problem from happening again. The most successful businesses are those that put themselves in customers’ shoes and build processes around customers’ needs and not their own.
You can’t win ’em all
Responding to complaints is important, but so too is knowing when to quit. Sometimes your best attempts to resolve the situation won’t be good enough and the only sensible thing to do is step away, even if you believe the complaint is unwarranted.
In 2021, an unhappy client who described law firm Summerfield Browne as “scam solicitors” on Trustpilot was ordered to pay £25,000 damages after the equally unhappy firm sued him for libel.
Whilst the firm was victorious in the eyes of the law, I’d hazard a guess that taking a client to court did not do much for business.
Needless to say that Liam Gallagher’s response on X to a fan accusing Oasis of rip-off tactics – telling him to “SHUTUP” – is not considered best practice.
The chance of fans being refunded the ‘dynamic’ price difference seems slim to none, but Some Might Say it’s better to Acquiesce, Listen Up and learn from your mistakes.
A version of this article first appeared on Insurance Claims
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