When faced with complaints about a product or service, people often become defensive, see making excuses as an easier way out, and look for ways to deflect the issue.
The problem isn’t our fault, that’s not actually the case.
Put the excuses aside.
A complaint should be perceived and handled correctly as an important sign that a customer’s connection with the brand is weakening – but not completely broken.
Good complaint management offers an opportunity for the brand to repair the strained bond with the customer, strengthen relationships, and improve products and services.
A complaining customer is like a consultant who voluntarily points out the cracks in your system.
They directly tell you how and why the product broke down, and where the service provided failed.
If the brand manages to accept customer feedback as freely obtained, consented data instead of wasting it by making excuses, improvement will follow.
Invisible obstacles in complaint management
The most important thing to be aware of regarding complaints is that they shouldn’t be seen simply as an outward expression of technical dissatisfaction.
Many companies make the biggest mistake in complaint management at this stage by focusing on the mechanical aspects of the complaint.
When a customer voices a complaint about a product or service, brands often focus on finding the answer to “why this happened.“
However, the customer’s primary expectation is not the mechanism by which the complaint arose, but to be understood.
No matter how logical an explanation is given to the customer about the problem they are experiencing, they are not interested in what is written in the technical manual at that moment. Unless they are emotionally satisfied, everything they hear sounds like a story and the brand becomes an excuse-maker.
The number one rule of success in complaint management is being able to listen to the customer without becoming defensive and without making any judgments.
When this active listening process, which includes empathy, is not implemented, even if you resolve the customer’s complaint, the customer may be left feeling neglected and brushed aside.
The act of listening isn’t simply about remaining silent while someone speaks; it also involves understanding emotions and perceiving the experience.
What the customer expects isn’t perfection, but rather to see someone taking responsibility for the problem they’re experiencing with the product.
The customer expects the feeling of helplessness or betrayal they experienced when faced with the defective product to be alleviated, rather than simply receiving a replacement.
Complaint management is related to brand reputation
Not every complaint from a customer provides rational data for the brand.
These days, everything is very expensive and when people experience disappointment with a product or service they purchased, they associate it with an event but they talk about the unmet deep expectations they had emotionally. In other words, they feel disregarded.
What the units communicating on behalf of the brand overlook is the emotional aspect of problem solving. Resolving emotional issues is one of the simplest ways to repair the relationship between the customer and the brand.
Complaint management should not be seen as a repair; it is directly related to managing brand reputation.
When the customer is listened to not only with ears but also with common sense, that complaint is not only resolved but the customer’s loyalty to the brand can be strengthened even more than before.
The obsession with speed in complaint management
In today’s world, where digital communication is extremely widespread, brands have begun to use and boast about time-based performance indicators related to complaint communication.
Speed can be a significant and remarkable competitive advantage but being fast doesn’t always guarantee an advantage in complaint management. Responding quickly to a complaint doesn’t always mean providing the right response.
Think of yourself as a customer. You have a product and you’re experiencing a problem with it.
You describe your problem to the brand in detail and with all its emotional weight and within seconds you receive an automated, generic response: “Your request has been received, we will get back to you as soon as possible.“
What would you think?
Automated, generic responses are not the definitive solution to improving complaint management; they are a sign of negligence.
Fast, robotic responses and soulless, ready-made templates, instead of mitigating the customer’s negative experience, cause them to become even more alienated from the brand.
In managing complaints, the focus should be on genuinely finding a real solution, rather than on speed.
Customers experiencing problems don’t expect speed at that moment; they look for emotional connection. Understanding and perceiving the concept of complaint management correctly is crucial.
In complaint reports, and even on online complaint platforms, the prominent KPIs are usually numbers.
For example:
We received 100 complaints about our company this month, and we resolved 87 of them. 81 of those 87 complaints received an initial response within the first fifteen minutes. 79 of those 81 complaints received feedback within seventy-two hours.
This table provides data on the speed of the operation but it doesn’t provide concrete data on the quality of the experience. It doesn’t explain which products or services received complaints, or what exactly broke down during the product experience.
In other words, it’s only focused on the outcome.
Resolving 87 complaints doesn’t mean that all 87 people have regained trust in the brand. However, the cases are likely closed.
A better way to understand users’ journey with a product and the turning points in their experience might be to move beyond simply treating complaint management as a statistical data set and instead approach it as a story.
Every complaint is an obstacle encountered in the journey and analyzing complaints effectively focuses not only on what the problem is, but also on how it arose and why it occurred.
Creating a roadmap for complaints can not only resolve the complaint but also successfully manage similar complaints in the future, shorten and accelerate resolution times and strengthen customer satisfaction.
Turning complaints into opportunities
Complaints may seem unpleasant, but if a customer voices a complaint about a product, it means they are still interested in the brand and the product. In that customer’s eyes, the brand still has an opportunity.
A complaint gives the brand a chance for improvement.
The riskiest and least likely to be reciprocated behavior for a brand is silently leaving. A customer who leaves silently may have completely burned their bridges and it is difficult to bring them back.
Considering that the cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than the cost of retaining one…
For most brands, while the person complaining is also the problem creator, it shouldn’t be forgotten that these individuals are actually the ones transforming the brand and acting as a mirror for it.
In other words, customers use the complaint mechanism to show the brand the cracks, malfunctions, and gaps between what is promised and what is delivered that it couldn’t see due to operational blindness.
Listening to complaints:
- Is about stepping outside your comfort zone.
- It encourages agile behavior.
- It allows you to understand the real-world performance of products.
Brands should listen to complaining customers not only to avoid losing them but also to learn from them. Because a complaint about a product is not just a criticism of the brand, but also an opportunity to change, transform and improve it.
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Some brands try to make crises stemming from complaints invisible. That is, the goal is not customer satisfaction but preventing the spread of a negative image.
The fundamental reason for this is the reflex to avoid losing the customer.
Brands should listen to complaints to learn from them and build their strategies accordingly.
I’m not just talking about complaint communication; covering up a crisis might work in the short term, but in the long term, it’s an approach that erodes a brand’s credibility.
Especially in this day and age, transparency is one of the cornerstones of reputation. Therefore, the behavior that strengthens a brand is not hiding the problem, but making it visible.
Complaint management and brand maturity
Brands that take their business seriously shouldn’t view complaint management and communication as just a sub-heading of customer service.
Every complaint is valuable data that measures the difference between a brand’s true value and a customer’s expectations of that brand.
Regularly collecting, analyzing, managing, and resolving this data may seem difficult at first, but success in complaint communication is a great opportunity for the concept of brand maturity to manifest itself.
One of the most important parameters affecting a brand’s size is no longer just the number of happy customers, but also how it deals with dissatisfaction.
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Before I finish, I have a small piece of advice.
Next time you receive a complaint about a product or service, be prepared and know where to begin before you start with a sentence that begins with “but.”
