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 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 surveys 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’ experiences with 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 benefit 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 on how your consumers feel regarding your products and services. Instead of conducting surveys and market research, categorizing customer issues can be a good start to recognizing the areas for improvement. Implementing those changes not only helps in serving customers better but also helps in maintaining a strong competitive advantage in the market. Below are a few points that will help you understand why customer complaints are important for any brand.
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Better Customer Understanding
Often, customers can offer better insight into the services and products that companies may lack. Understanding your customer’s needs and qualms through reading customer complaints will help you 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 to improve products and services. Eventually, it leads to more customer loyalty towards your brand and positive word of mouth.
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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 a lack of interaction from all the communication touchpoints. Customer complaints can help brands realize the need to improve customer support and its importance in increasing brand reputation to the next level. Using omnichannel support, brands become proactive in their approach to touching all the customer support touchpoints so that they can provide excellent customer service.
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Enhanced Customer Communication
For a successful business, customer communication is a crucial part where businesses must address customer complaints effectively. It is the responsibility of companies to make their customers feel important because sometimes they feel that brands don’t care about their consent. Hence, brands should encourage customers to reach out to 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.
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Improved Customer Loyalty
Most 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 on time. Even if there is no solution to the customer complaint, compensating the customer in some other way will improve your brand’s reputation. It will encourage customers to remain loyal to your brand despite their inconveniences.
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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 handle every customer complaint carefully, especially when it is brought up several times by multiple customers. Evaluating the issues and concerns will help you troubleshoot 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.
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Increased Word of Mouth
It is very important to satisfy customers by understanding their latent needs and solving 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 more effective than any commercial ads. When a potential customer hears positive aspects regarding a brand, chances are high that they will convert to a customer. This illustrates why customer complaints are so important for your brand.
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Product/Service Upgrade
When a company receives customer complaints regarding a product or service or a simple feature they don’t like, the brand should treat this as a golden opportunity to upgrade their product or service by resolving their customer queries. As a brand, you should always look for ways to please your customers with a product or service upgrade so that they will choose you over your competitors. Customer complaints serve as a great insight into the areas of improvement in your business.
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Positive Brand Image
Having a proper communication channel where customers can lodge customer experiences and complaints also reflects a positive brand image. But you have to make sure that you are addressing those issues within time and taking their feedback concisely. It will improve your brand reputation and make your brand look caring and trustworthy towards your customers. The more your brand goes the extra mile to address 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, which will help build your brand reputation.
CONCLUSION
In the end, a business should understand that customer complaints are part of the business. A company cannot keep every customer happy due to multiple business and economic restrictions. The important thing that a brand can do is acknowledge and communicate with customers about their complaints. Use it as a learning experience or in a positive way to upgrade 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 greater business success.
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