Page 224 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

ANOTHER 20 MARKETING IDEAS

106 Deal with customer complaints quickly and
fairly

At some stage in your business life you will have to deal
with customer complaints. Very few businesses are good at
handling complaints. The best outcome that can be achieved
from a complaint is that the customer leaves on good terms
and continues to use your business. The worst outcome is
that the customer leaves the store vowing never to return,
telling all of their friends how bad your business is. Obvi-
ously the first option is a lot better.

How many complaints are acceptable? Ideally, the obvi-
ous answer is none. In a perfect world we would all love
to have no complaining customers. In reality this is unlikely
to happen. It really is a numbers game where the more
people you deal with the more likely you are to have the
odd complaint.

There are a number of issues to address when it comes
to dealing with complaints. First, what is a complaint? I
believe they take various forms from the simple wrong item
purchased to a faulty product or service to a broken
promise or business arrangement. A complaint arises in any
situation where the customers feel they have not got what
they paid for and they voice their opinion by complaining
to the business.

Prevention is better than a cure so try to make certain
that your business is running smoothly to reduce the risk
of customer complaints. Slow service is the thing I find the
hardest to tolerate, especially in restaurants, bank queues
or when waiting on the phone. If your business is getting
complaints about one particular product or service, do
yourself a favour and fix it up straight away.

The next step is to make up a customer complaints
policy. This simply means that you will decide now how to
deal with any complaints you receive. Your policy needs
to be fair and reasonable and I suggest that, when it comes

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