Introduction
Customer complaints may portray a negative reflection of the brand, but they are loaded with useful customer insights and information that can be used positively. Whenever customers submit negative feedback about your products or services, make sure to use the information and rectify the particular issues as soon as possible. It will not only help in serving excellent customer service but also help in maintaining a positive brand image in the market. However, the negative comments can sometimes be a blessing in disguise if they can be used appropriately. Think that your brand is getting free customer insights and invaluable information without investing in conducting any customer feedback survey from your end.
What are Customer Complaints?
Customer complaints are defined as the gap between what customers get and what brands promise to their customers in terms of products and services. It is a mismatch between the brand’s offerings and customers’ experience from that particular brand. A customer usually complains to a brand when the brand doesn’t fulfill the customer’s expectations with their products and services.
Based on the type of complaint, a brand can turn it into a positive change by resolving them within the promised time. Or, a company can change that feature or service in a way so that the customers get benefitted from their offerings. There are different types of customer complaints that are based on:
- Poor Quality of Service
- Lack of Proper Brand Communication
- Unfulfillment of Brand’s promise
Benefits of Customer Complaints in Your Business
Customer complaints act as an initial perspective of how your consumers feel regarding your products and services. Instead of conducting surveys and market research, categorizing the customer issues can be a good start to recognizing the areas of improvement. Implementing those changes not only helps in serving customers better and also helps in maintaining a strong competitive advantage in the market. Below are a few points that will help you to understand why customer complaints are important for any brand.
1. Better Customer Understanding
Often customers can offer a better insight into the services and products that companies may lack. Understanding your customer’s needs and qualms through reading customer complaints will help to serve them in a better way. Even if a customer complains about a minor inconvenience, make sure that you fix that issue as early as possible. Learn the psychology of the customers and use it in improving products and services. Eventually, it leads to more customer loyalty towards your brand and positive word of mouth.
2. Improving Customer Support
Have you thought about why your brand is receiving too many customer complaints these days? It can be a delayed response from your side or can be a lack of interaction from all the communication touchpoints. Customer complaints can help brands in realizing the need of improving customer support and its importance in increasing brand reputation to the next level. Using omnichannel support, brands become proactive in their approach of touching all the customer support touchpoints so that they can provide excellent customer service.
3. Enhanced Customer Communication
For running a successful business, customer communication is a crucial part where businesses must address customer complaints effectively. It is the responsibility of the companies to make their customers feel important because sometimes they feel that brands don’t care about their consent. Hence, brands should encourage the customers to reach them with their queries and issues and solve them proactively. Customers must realize the interest of the brands in solving their issues, thus it will not only increase customer loyalty but also increase brand reputation.
4. Improved Customer Loyalty
Most of the customers contact a company for lodging an issue with the expectation of resolving their issues quickly or being compensated. Ensure the customer service agent attends their calls promptly and make sure that they provide relevant solutions timely. Even if there is no solution to the customer complaint, compensating the customer in some other way will portray your brand’s reputation. It will encourage the customers to remain loyal to your brand despite their experience of inconvenience.
5. Recognizing Mistakes
For every complaint you receive, there is a probability that hundreds of other customers may face the same issue but haven’t approached. It is advisable to pay every customer complaint carefully especially when they are brought several times by multiple customers. Evaluating the issues and concerns will help you in troubleshooting the problems that you didn’t know about their existence. Improve your business process and services while working on your mistakes regarding products and services so that your business can achieve brand reputation and profitability.
6. Increased Word of Mouth
It is very important to satisfy the customers by understanding the latent needs and solving the issues with your brand offerings. When a brand appropriately addresses customer issues, customers will speak positively about the brand to their friends and family. Customer service has a significant role in creating a positive brand image in customer’s minds. Recommendations from Word of Mouth are invaluable and are more effective than any commercial ads. When a potential customer hears positive aspects regarding a brand, then chances are high that they will convert to a customer. This illustrates why customer complaints are so important for your brand.
7. Product/Service Upgrade
When a company receives customer complaints regarding a product or service or simple feature related, they don’t like, then the brand should treat this as a golden opportunity for upgrading their product or services by resolving their customer queries. As a brand, you should always look for ways to please your customers with the product or service upgrade so that they will choose you over the competitors. Customer complaints serve as a great insight into the areas of improvement in your business.
8. Positive Brand Image
Having a proper communication channel where customers can lodge customer experiences and customer complaints also reflects a positive brand image. But you have to make sure that you are addressing those issues within time and take their feedback concisely. It will improve your brand reputation and make your brand look caring and trustworthy towards your customers. The more your brand will go the extra mile for addressing the customer issues, the more satisfied your customers will be. If your customers are happy, then they are more likely to spread positive comments about your brands to their friends and family that will help in building your brand reputation.
Final Thoughts
In the end, a business should understand that customer complaint is a part of the business. A company cannot keep every customer happy due to multiple business and economic restrictions. The important aspect that a brand can do is to acknowledge and communicate with the customer complaints. Use it as a learning experience or in a positive way for upgrading any features of the product or service of your brand. Addressing customer complaints needs patience and time, however, companies need to find ways of resolving the queries for generating greater business success.
