How to deal with customer complaints?

Start by understanding who your reviewers are and why they're writing their reviews. This will give you clarity, showing you how to respond. If they're unhappy, make things right. If they're misguided, share the facts. If they're abusive, monitor but do not engage with their complaints.

Common ways to handle customer complaints?

Common approaches include: Apologizing and owning mistakes, take the conversation offline, look for a win/win solution to the customer's problem. While these are common approaches to customer complaints, they're not always the best.

What are the 5 steps to handling a customer complaint?

Here are several approaches you can take: Ask for more information. Gather intel from customers. Apologize and look for opportunities to make things right. Offer incentives to compensate customers for the loss of their time and money. Ask customers for feedback or updates to their review.

What is the best way to respond to a customer complaint?

Here are some actionable steps you can take to respond to your customer complaints. (1.) Listen to your reviewer, (2.) be transparent, (3.) cite your sources, (4.) be timely, (5.) watch your tone, (6.) offer next steps, (7.) escalate to management, (8.) apply the 80/20 rule.

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Why Having Some Bad Reviews Is… Good?

January 10, 2017

What? Bad reviews are good? Ok, let me explain. Actually, let Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List explain.

In a recent NPR podcast she talks about the topic of bad online reviews and what they mean to a business. With over 10 million reviews on Angie’s List, she understands how they impact businesses very well. Besides being an excellent story about how Angie’s List got started, there are some interesting take-aways for all of us about online reviews.

How Bad Reviews Can Help

At 26:00 in, she says (I’m paraphrasing)

when I look at reviews, it’s important to read the context of the reviews. No matter how great you are as a company, you are going to get some complaints. I honestly believe you learn more when you see a company that has a few complaints, than you do when you see a company that has all glowing reviews. Every company makes mistakes, and you want to see how they are going to handle them. How you do that addresses the fears of the consumer.

Responding to Bad Reviews

So how should you respond to negative online reviews? She goes on to say:

On the flip side, I spend a lot of time talking to service companies and encouraging them not to respond to reviews right away. No one likes negative feedback. I always suggest they get a cup of coffee, come back, think about it before they write something, because what they say can be more powerful than 10 reviews might say!

Here’s the Podcast

Take-Aways

So the take-aways for me are:

It’s OK if you don’t get all 5 star reviews. In fact, research shows that consumers trust ratings of less than 5 stars more than all 5 star ratings.
When you do get a bad review, step back and take a breath before responding. Your response is a huge opportunity to show how you take care of your customers.

As I write this blog post, I think about how hard it is to take negative reviews. I’ve received them, and it hurts. But I always challenge myself to learn something from each review. Maybe it’s not about my product or service, but the expectations I’m setting. Or maybe it’s just a customer that I can never please. But it’s helped me a lot to step back and grab that cup of coffee and relax before responding.

What do you think about bad reviews. How do you handle them? Do you turn them into an opportunity?

Don Campbell

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