Building a business requires caution and alertness especially when it comes to your customer’s perception of your business. Customer dissatisfaction can harm your brand and you may not be able to recover from the damage in a long time. Customer service is a major pillar of entrepreneurship and good customer service is a distinct feature of successful businesses.
The rise of social media and internet use has even increased the importance of customer service and feedback. We live in an age where information travels fast. This means you have to be watchful of every single feedback you get from your customers. Especially if you don’t want your business to be top on the trend table on apps like Twitter for some negative reason.
I believe there are ways business owners can address customer dissatisfaction in their SMEs. It is all about converting the dissatisfaction into customer satisfaction and favorable feedback. You can use these feedbacks to publicize on social media and the internet.
Always Listen to Help not to Respond
When dealing with a client’s complaint, pay attention to helping them out of whatever jam they must have found themselves in. Some business owners respond to customers to prove to them that they (the customers) are at fault if a product is not working. They also tend to do this if some guidelines are not clear.
This is not necessary. As a business owner, you are not in a contest with your customers to determine who is right or wrong. The purpose of customer feedback and service is to ensure that your customers get the best goods and services from you. You also want to find ways to make them keep coming back. If that is what you are aiming for, then I recommend you change your approach from a combative one to an understanding approach.
Listen to your customer’s complaints and understand why they are dissatisfied. Then let them know how you are going to help them and make sure you do. Then get feedback from them after solving their problem for them. Customers want to feel heard and they want to believe they matter. It’s your job as a business owner to handle your customer dissatisfaction with courtesy and respect. The goal is to ensure that they remain your customers even after the complaint.
Do a Post-Complaint Review of your Products and Services
Sometimes, the problem is not with your clients and customers. It is with your products and services. I know this is a hard pill to swallow but accepting this is the first step to solving the problem of customer dissatisfaction. As a business owner, I believe your goal should not just be responding to complaints positively and respectfully. The goal should be to get to the point where you do not even receive complaints. This often happen when customers realize that your products and services work flawlessly.
How can this be achieved? Address every single complaint about the complaining customer and every other customer. This means, if a customer complains about a particular product you sell or the service you render, do not just see it as a grumpy customer complaining. Rather, see it as a fault in your product that needs to be fixed.
What this difference in approach does is to help you respect the customer. It also helps you to see your product as the problem, not the compliant. It also helps you to review your product for any fault it may have. I also recommend that you review your services. You can do this by asking customers to give feedback on any of your services that receive multiple complaints.
You will notice that, oftentimes, customers are alike in their complaints. If you can fix your products or services for one customer, there is a good chance that other customers will benefit from it. So, focus on effecting change on a general note by having a review of your products and services for better functionality. Avoid only pacifying any customers when they complain.
Protect your Brand and do not lose Customers
As hard as it may sound, ensure that you do not lose customers due to complaints. It is understandable if customers can no longer access your products and services due to a change in location or other reasons. Especially if these reasons are not directly connected to the functionality of your products and services. However, if you are losing customers due to dissatisfaction, then you need to pay attention to that.
Get feedback from every customer on all your products and services. Work on every feedback you get and make sure you reach out to your customers after you’ve worked on their complaints. Let them know that you’ve responded to their complaints by solving the issue they complained about. You then ask them to check it out to see if it works as they want it to.
This approach protects your brand. When your customers want to talk about you and your products, they will remember to mention that you attended to their complaints swiftly.
Conclusion
Handling customer dissatisfaction is not about proving your customers wrong. It is about listening to them and addressing their complaints from a place of care and concern.