How to stop hating complaints Step 2: Design a comprehensive process that takes a client from disappointed to delighted - without breaking the bank

Hey there,

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You may already have a process for dealing with a complaint.

You might refuse liability. You might offer replacement only. Or you might have a "money back, no questions asked returns" policy.

But even the best of these options falls short of dealing with everything that's going on when someone complains.

As we saw last time, a complaint is rarely just about the technicality of what's gone wrong. It's also about being seen and heard, about maintaining some kind of relationship, or about making things better for the future.

So if your process doesn't actively address all of these aspects of a complaint, you're missing out on an opportunity to take an unhappy client from disapppointment to delight, and on to become an advocate for your business.

Worse, you might be giving away profit too.

You'd be undermining your business on two fronts.

So in this newsletter we'll go through:

• Why you need a comprehensive process
• The outline of a proven high-level, universal, comprehensive process you can use as a starting point

Why you need a comprehensive process

You need a process because it would be impossible to predict every possible reason why something might go wrong for a customer, (although that shouldn't stop you thinking about that). And even if you could, the script would be so big that nobody would refer to it.

You need a process so that other people in your business can handle customer complaints consistently, confidently and profitably.

You need a comprehensive process because in the emotionally charged situation of a complaint, you need to make sure that whoever is standing in for you remembers to cover everything needed.

Rather than attempt to catalogue every possible eventuality, it's much more practical to design a process that addresses everything needed, yet can be applied to any situation, allowing the person dealing with the complaint to flex according the reality in front of them, while at the same time saving them from having to make up a solution on the spot.

The outline of a proven high-level, universal, comprehensive process you can use as a starting point

As it happens there is a high-level, universal, comprehensive process you can use as the starting point for your own. If you've been a reader of this newsletter for a while, you've probably already encountered it:

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Here's how it works:

Create Rapport: Use empathy to move the complainer from feeling to thinking

Rapport is just a posh word for something we humans continually create and re-create between ourselves all the time: "a feeling of sympathy and understanding; a close emotional bond"

We start here, because there are always two aspects to a complaint:

• The facts about what has gone wrong.
• What the complainer feels about that - disappointment, anger, humiliation, hurt. Plus anxiety about how we are going to be treated.

And because we are human beings, feelings come first.

And while we are feeling, we can't be thinking.

So it is important to deal with the feelings first, and the facts second.

Create Rapport is about showing empathy, acknowledging how they feel, aiming to understand how their deeper emotional needs have been let down by the perceived failure, recognising that their feelings are a valid, natural response to what's happened.

And once the feelings have been acknowledged, they often start to fade into the background, enabling both of you to collaborate rationally and constructively on how best to address that failure to your mutual advantage.

Tips:

• Assume honesty, but do ask for evidence.
• Put yourself in their shoes, and sympathise. Genuinely. Show the kind of sympathy that enables the complainer to recover enough equanimity to move on.
• Sympathy doesn't change the facts. It doesn't put either of you in the wrong. All sympathy does is put everyone in the right state to be able to consider facts sensibly.

As soon as the complainer has recovered their equanimity, and only then,

Ask for the facts of what's happened. Make a note of their complaint:

• Which Product/Service is involved?
• What went wrong?
• What collateral damage arises from that? What else has ‘broken’? What additional expense have they been put to? What inconvenience has resulted?
• How long have they been a customer?
• What's their primary motivation in making a complaint?

Explore Possibilities: Co-create a solution that works for both of you.

The next job is to find out what will make the complainer happy again. What will repair, or even strengthen their relationship with you?

You need to be able to offer a solution that is right for both of you.

That means you need their help to find it.

Ask: ‘What could we do to make this right for you?‘

• Let them tell you what they would feel is reasonable.
• As they tell you, mentally review the cost of that against the Net-profit Margin for the Product, and the Customer Life-time Net Profit you recorded in the Net Profit Margins Calculators we went through last time.
• The chances are that what they would find reasonable - a replacement or their money back - is well within bounds.
• And as long as whatever they ask for costs less than the Customer Lifetime Net Profit, the business can afford to spend it in order to retain a customer.

If it does happen that what they ask for is unreasonable - i.e. exceeds even the Customer Lifetime Net Profit - dig a bit more into why they are asking for that.

• What else has happened to them as a result of the cause of their complaint?
• Is there some additional damage or inconvenience? For example, their purchase may have been a gift for a relative, and now it will arrive late.

The aim here is not to argue with the customer, but to probe what’s really behind an unreasonable request and identify non-monetary ways you can turn their disappointment into delight.

Remember that for some people the motivation is not so much compensation for themselves as a desire to make sure it doesn't happen again. So make sure the solution includes that.

Once you have arrived a solution that works for both of you:

Confirm what they’ve told you:

Repeat back to them what you’ve heard: “So if I understand you correctly, if we did and/or , things would be right between us?”

If they hesitate, or look uncertain, ask: “What else could we do that would really make it absolutely right for you?” and go back to Step 1.

By the end of this activity, you should have a pretty good idea of what would restore your customer’s faith in the relationship.

Often, it’s not that costly.

Genuine human sympathy and acknowledgement of the kind you've given in Create Rapport goes a long way to making people feel better. Getting them to participate in finding an amicable solution in Explore Possibilities goes even further.

Exceed Expectations: Exceed their expectation - without breaking the bank.

Whatever it is that you’ve agreed on in Explore Possibilities – go one better.

Offer a solution that will exceed their expectations, without costing more than the Customer Lifetime Net Profit.

This often involves addressing the collateral damage – for example if a pan breaks in normal use, you’d expect to replace it. If in breaking, the contents fell out and spoilt a tablecloth, you could offer to replace the tablecloth too.

Or, if the customer travelled out of their way by public transport to make their complaint, you could send them home in a cab.

Or, if they had to miss a family occasion as a result of this failure, find a way to create a new occasion to make up for it - offer tickets for a show, or a meal out, or a hamper for a picnic.

If the added extra is something that you produce, so much the better. But don't restrict yourself to that.

It’s this kind of attention to the inconvenience caused by failure that tips an unhappy complainer into an advocate for your business.

If the customer is motivated more by preventing the same thing happening to others, tell them how you propose to tackle that.

Let them know how you'll report the problem, and what will happen afterwards. You could even take their contact details so you can follow up with them when action has been taken.

Remember, they are complaining because they care about the relationship they have with you.

Deliver on the Deal: Keep this promise to re-build trust

Whatever you've come up with in Exceed Expectations, do it, without hesitation, quibbles, conditions or delays.

Keeping this particular promise helps to reassure them that the business will keep it's larger Promise in future.

This is where faith is restored.

Pre-empt repetition: Stop the same complaint happening again.

Even if all your client wanted was their money back, and the inconvenience to them acknowledged, you're doing yourself and your business a favour when you think about how to stop the same mistake happening again.

So, create a Simple Follow-up Activity to run after every complaint.

You could run this Activity as part of a daily stand-up meeting, or schedule regular meetings to handle a week's or month's worth of complaints.

Whenever you do it, here's a simple structure to follow:

• Why did this Complaint happen?
• What could we do to stop it happening again?
• What are the possible unintended consequences?
• What changes should be made?
• Who will make the changes?
• When will the changes happen?

And of course I've created a template checklist for you, so you can record everything we've covered in this newsletter: Complaint Log and Follow-up Checklist.

Logging all your complaints in one place will let you see trends you might miss in the heat of the moment. After all, what starts out as a mistake might just turn into a new product or service you didn't know your people needed.

That’s it for this newsletter.

Here’s what you learned today:

• A good complaints handling process addresses emotions first. Otherwise, the emotions get in the way of resolving the problem.
• There is a proven process you can use as the starting point for your own. And it's not really about handling a complaint. It's about restoring a customer's faith in your business.
• The final, vital step in restoring customer faith in your business is to ensure as far as you can, that the mistake you made with them won't be repeated.

The process I've outlined above is probably good enough to get you going. But it will be even better if you customise it to suit your business.

That's what we'll look at next time.

As always, any questions, feedback or observations, do get in touch.

Thanks for reading!

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