Customer Complaints: 8 Common Complaints & How to Resolve Them

This can reduce the volume of support tickets and calls during an outage. When you get a “Your Service Is Down” alert, it’s not just a technical issue; it’s a trust issue. Your customers rely on your service for their own operations, and downtime can have a ripple effect on their business. This scenario is a critical test of your company’s responsiveness and communication skills, and it offers a chance to demonstrate reliability even in a crisis.

Empathy is one of the most important customer service skills, and acknowledging their frustration helps them feel heard and appreciated. For example, if customers report long call wait times, it could be that they are calling during peak times of the day when your service team is swamped with higher than normal call volumes. When you do have to follow up on a case, customers will often have different expectations for follow-up communication. Some customers will expect an ongoing chain of updates while others will be more patient.

Once you identify your top performers, you can not only reward their hard work but tap into their successful strategies to help improve the rest of the team. Don’t be afraid to use emojis to convey warmth and good humor, or pick up the phone if you find an email or chat conversation getting tense. Refund requests can arise for a variety of reasons—unmet expectations, financial constraints, or even just a change of heart. I am looking for a conversational AI engagement solution for the web and other channels. Your agent should be aware of the entire conversation they’ve had with your chatbot. Keep reading to find out how to avoid leaving your customers tugging their hair in frustration.

After venting, they will give us a chance to resolve their problem and win them over in the process. Abhinav from our sales team had promised a deadline for the call recording feature to a TeleCRM customer. I understand the feeling but jumping to blame or asking people to never do this is short-sighted.

These questions are often the first point of contact between the customer and the company. This drives hyper-personalized interactions tailored to each customer and makes sure that incoming customer queries go to the right agent. The art of streamlining incoming customer queries starts with truly understanding the voice of the customer at every stage of the customer journey.

When you analyze the results, you can use this customer data to drive better business decisions that ultimately impact the overall customer experience. Personalized service means understanding and catering to the unique needs and preferences of each customer, ensuring they feel valued and understood. In an era where automated responses are common, standing out with genuine, tailored service can be a significant differentiator.

Conflict Resolution Skills to Use with Your Team and Your Customers

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to handle these situations and tricky customers like a champ. By the end of this article, you’ll be better equipped to turn even the trickiest customer service scenarios into opportunities for building stronger relationships. On Engati, your live agents will be able to see exactly what they told your intelligent chatbot. The repetitive, monotonous queries can be handled with conversational automation chatbot. We offer actionable advice about live chat, chat bots, marketing automation, customer service, and sales. Sign up and we’ll send you the best of the blog, from articles to infographics, every two weeks.

This not only keeps your user base engaged but also helps you prioritize based on actual demand. But how you handle these situations can set you apart from the competition. This is going to be different than the other examples we’ve given so far because your answer will vary widely based on your business and features. For this section, we’ll show you a direct example of what we’ve done at Formilla, and explain why, so you can tailor it for your own use. Sadly there will always be those times when the product just wasn’t suitable for the customer. When this happens the customer is likely to contact you with a returns or refund inquiry.

Customers submit complaints when they are not happy with your service or something has gone wrong. Complaints don’t necessarily have to be from angry customers but most customers with complaints will expect some kind of reparation. Customer complaints need to be dealt with very quickly and with the utmost care and conscientiousness. When you make your customer service policies explicit this raises the standard of service your agents are able to offer. The first step to managing your call centre workflow is to set up a proper organisational chart. Your staff need to know who is responsible for what, the tools at their disposal, and how customer service queries are assigned.

”, which might be better positioned as “How was your experience with [Brand] today?. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. With the quantitative and qualitative data you gather, you can set goals, measure your performance over time, and see where you need to improve. The answers can tell you if a customer situation has been resolved, or if you need to take action to close the feedback loop fast.

They are true renaissance men and women, blending traditional skills like speed and product knowledge with softer skills that leave customers with an exceptional experience. Natural language processing analyses a customer query, presented in their own words, enabling routing to the best agent or experience for resolution. Rigid DTMF-based IVRs can no longer keep up with elevated customer service expectations. Operational efficiency requires fluid journeys, driven by the wealth of available unstructured data, such as customer speech.

Ensure that the knowledge base has intuitive navigation and a user-friendly search feature. Customers should be able to easily find relevant information without getting lost in the website’s structure. There are core skills and specialized skills which vary between businesses and industries. Of course, agents should be encouraged to develop in areas which are of interest, but attention also needs to be paid to tracking incoming query types.

If the root cause is an issue with your current internal service processes, update them to make them more clear to the team and provide more training if necessary. Now that you have a good grasp of the issues your customers are facing, it’s time to address the main causes. For example they may say longer call hold times, or report a bug with your product.

So, as a business, you’re faced with two choices; either hire more agents or force your customers to wait longer periods of time to get their issues resolved. It enables your customer to converse with a live agent and get those complex issues resolved over the same channel. Also, rather than respond with a feature comparing ‘checklist’ to show the exact differences, we prefer to focus on our strengths. Most live chat software is the same – but the small extras we offer (like affordability, great customer service, simplicity, and reliability) help us stand out from the crowd. Customer service agents can always benefit from learning new customer service skills which allow them to better help your customers.

With the rise of digital platforms and AI-powered tools, being tech-savvy is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity in customer service. Tech-savviness refers to the ability to understand and efficiently use various tools and platforms relevant to your role. In this article, we take a look at 17 essential skills that are relevant for those working in customer service and ways to develop these skills. Average handle time (AHT) is similar to average resolution time, but there is a slight difference.

Reiterate for clarity and understanding.

Part of offering excellent customer service is reducing friction for your customers. After all, customers shouldn’t feel like resolving their issue is a worse experience than what they were contacting the service team about in the first place. Trader Joe’s are likely able to excel because they monitor critical metrics related to the service they provide. In this post, learn about critical customer service and service desk KPIs that will help you understand your support strategies and improve customer satisfaction.

Plus, if you do this the customers will get a clear picture of what they can and can’t get. It is critical to fight the “forgetting curve”, especially when agents are upskilling, cross-skilling, and keeping up with regulatory requirements. This improves the quality of the routing decisions to keep interactions flowing, whilst keeping the administrative burden to a minimum. If you’re unable to provide a solution on their first call, set expectations for what comes next.

Loyal customers are looking for signs that brands are willing to improve, and customer feedback surveys are one way of proving this. In our research, we found that 58% of respondents felt it was very or extremely important that a company follow up for more info or to fix their issue. Closing the loop means not only fixing an issue, but asking about the experience and taking action to improve. It’s a useful method for listening to your customers, to understand if they’re happy or not with your brand, product or service.

It’s also an opportunity to show that you’re committed to resolving issues in a timely manner, even when the clock is ticking loudly. The “I Want a Refund” customer support scenario is a high-stakes customer interaction that often signals dissatisfaction with your product or service. While it may seem like a loss, it’s actually a valuable opportunity to seek feedback and understand where you can improve.

If you want to increase customer retention, you need to prepare your reps for scenarios they’ll face with difficult or frustrated customers. In this post, we’ll break down the different types of customers complaints as well as the steps your team can take to resolve each one. So, when customer complaints roll in, it’s important to hear them out because these are opportunities to improve the customer experience and prevent potential churn. This allows you Chat PG to focus on simply asking questions about your customer experience, and waiting for the results to be interpreted and delivered for you. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are used to understand your customer’s satisfaction levels with your organization’s products, services, or experiences. Include channel-specific questions on a customer survey to assess which customer support channels are the most effective, and which channels need to be revised.

Calculating how much it costs to resolve each ticket is critical to determining staffing and operating costs. To find your cost per resolution, take your total service department costs for a given time period and divide them by the number of tickets resolved for the same time period. For example, suppose a support rep is resending a package to a customer.

• If you’re unable to provide a solution on their first call, set expectations for what comes next.
• Addressing customer questions, concerns, and issues promptly and effectively is key to building strong relationships and fostering customer loyalty.
• Hiver offers an intuitive customer service platform that works inside Gmail.
• Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland hotel delivered truly helpful customer service when a customer asked them where she could buy a particular alarm clock they had in her room.

The first step is to understand what is involved in dealing with different enquiries in different channels. Find out what their goals and needs are, then teach them how they can use the product to achieve success. If the product is broken, provide options for immediate replacement and try to determine how it broke. If it was user error, gently point out to the customer how they can avoid this outcome in the future.

Discover 5 ways to switch from reactive customer support to proactive customer support and turn your customers into advocates for… For example, you notice a pattern where many customers ask about installation procedures after purchasing a specific product. Instead of waiting for more customers to inquire, you can take the initiative to send out a step-by-step guide to every new purchaser.

Customer Service Scenario 5: The Angry Customers’ “You’re Not as Good as [Competitor]” Comments

Integrating customer inquiries with social media platforms enables businesses to address questions and concerns raised on social channels. This prompt response not only resolves customer issues but also showcases the brand’s commitment to customer satisfaction. Maybe your service team noticed an influx of customers calling for information that could be better communicated with a self-serve FAQ page or similar option. Creating a knowledge base customers can use to resolve their issues may be the best solution for light troubleshooting. This way customers don’t have to wait on hold and it frees up your service rep’s time to handle more complicated service requests. Make it easy for them to find their own resolution by publishing a knowledge base.

This allows consumers to interact with your brand, however and whenever they want. This also allows human agents to focus on complex interactions which require a human agent and empathy. Overall, this creates an ideal process for both agents, customers and your business.

It’s the simplest way to improve the customer experience and cut down on your customer service queries. The most comprehensive way to understand and improve the customer experience for your target audience is to capture feedback across all touchpoints where customer service is happening. You’ll be able to more efficiently handle more customer inquiries if you deflect some tickets using self-service resources. For example, a self-service customer knowledge base can offer answers to common customer inquiries such as how to set up your product and how to troubleshoot typical problems. Identify when a customer query requires the expertise of specialized teams, such as senior support staff or technical experts.

Customer inquiries are any instance in which a customer gets in touch with your company to request information, make a complaint, or share an experience. There are all sorts of reasons why customers might reach out and they are expecting a timely and effective response. When your business sells a product to a customer, it’s making a promise to provide good service that will keep the customer happy and lead to customer satisfaction. Once each customer service query is prioritised, it should be segmented according to the type of request.

You can also set up tiers within each category for even more effective ticket handling. You need to know how you’ll tackle customer requests, how things are escalated, who’s responsible for what, and which approach works best. Sure, there will be a few people for whom a particular unavailable feature will be mission-critical, and they will rightly get the choice to move to a different provider. But, when you’re operating with the right mindset, then every mess or mistake is an opportunity to gather the right feedback and make great corrective changes.

When you treat your customers well through effectively handling their inquiries, they have a positive brand experience which they then share with people they know and online. Responding effectively and quickly to customer inquiries shows that you value your customer’s time, and are willing to go the extra mile to make things right. Customers aren’t going to wait around for a long time for your business to get back to them, and they want an answer yesterday.

Managers should give their reps the benefit of the doubt but try to get every possible detail. Rather than criticizing the rep’s approach, look for opportunities to teach the agent about preventing these types of situations. If these issues continue to occur, it may be time to take more severe actions. If your team works in a call center, Average Time on Hold (ATH) is one of your most important call center metrics. Customers want fast answers and can’t afford to spend their afternoon with a phone glued to their ear.

Continuous Improvement and Feedback

In our case, sometimes our customers will install our live chat software to multiple different websites, however they’ve purchased only a single website package. While this isn’t a customer service scenario, per se, asking for feedback from your customers is extremely important! Feedback will help you improve everything about your business, from your service to your product and more. Sales inquiries are fairly routine inquiries from customers who want to learn more about your products and services.

In these cases, you should have a self-service space where your reps can direct these requests to. These product requests are valuable, but you can’t afford to have reps spending their day listening to customer ideas. Create a forum where customers can post these ideas for your product development team to see. This will give your team an opportunity to comment and engage with customers who want to improve your product.

• Overall, this creates an ideal process for both agents, customers and your business.
• This prompt response not only resolves customer issues but also showcases the brand’s commitment to customer satisfaction.
• When you time your surveys at the right moment, it won’t feel like an intrusion – it will feel like you’re asking for their opinion and care about their thoughts.
• For example, a SaaS web application could enable customers to contact support from within the product, providing relevant context for support staff.
• These questions are often the first point of contact between the customer and the company.

The most effective customer service representatives are those who can adapt to new tools, policies, and situations while maintaining a high level of service. By being emotionally intelligent, support agents can navigate these situations effectively, resulting in better outcomes for both the customer and the company. Let’s say your total operating costs are $20,000 per month and your team resolved 2,000 tickets. Analyzing the reasons why customers contact support is just as important as how fast their issues are resolved. Monitoring customer-reported issues can help you determine gaps in your instruction and training materials. If you find a pattern or that folks are reporting the same issue, it may be a sign of a larger problem.

Providing accurate and detailed answers is crucial for customers to make informed purchasing decisions. Leveraging AI to answer and document common questions streamlines this process, easing workload and enhancing customer satisfaction. If you do have to follow up on a case, your service rep should make communication expectations clear.

In the meantime, your reps should apologize for the long wait times and work to ensure first call resolution. Don’t ask leading questions – Leading questions can obscure the truth of a customer’s view on your brand, product or service, so avoiding them helps you to get a clear answer. An example of a leading question might be, “How great was your experience with [Brand] today?

Respond quickly

We typically ask for feedback during ongoing conversations with our customers. If you spent a lot of time with them (and they seem fairly happy or at least satisfied), it’s a good opportunity to ask for feedback. Find yourself in a customer service scenario and aren’t sure how to handle it?

It’s a common part of customer service that tests both your team’s skills and your company’s escalation protocols. When a customer asks to speak to a manager, it’s often because they feel their concerns aren’t being adequately addressed. While this can feel like a failure on the frontline, it’s actually a critical juncture for quality control and service improvement. How you handle the customer’s problem can either escalate the issue or turn it into a learning and improvement opportunity for your entire support team. This data is gold for your product development and customer service teams, helping them identify areas for improvement. The “Something’s Broken” ticket is a common but critical customer service scenario.

You can raise the morale of your customer service agents when they aren’t dealing with too many repetitive inquiries. It’s a good idea to keep training your agents so they are always at the top customer queries of their game when it comes to dealing with customer calls. After all, your agents are the representatives of your brand and responsible for creating a good impression with your customers.

Think of your customer service operation like McDonald’s where customers get consistent service across the board. No matter what agent they speak with — whether via chat, email or phone – they are providing consistent answers to customers reporting the same issue. Delays in response time can negatively affect a customer’s interaction with a business, making it one of the most monitored customer service KPIs.

First and foremost your company is running on this customer’s money (and others like him) so he is damn important. That means somebody in the sales team had to do the hard work of building trust and creating a relationship. If you are a customer support representative then at some point in your career you will face a situation like Ankit.

No matter how customers arrive at this conclusion, your team needs to know how to prevent them from turning to your competitors. A long-term solution to this problem is to invest in help desk software. A help desk can manage and distribute incoming service requests to the most ideal agents.

Reps should report these issues to their managers who can notify both sales and product management teams. Service reps should encourage customers to remain patient and let them know that they’ll reach out when the shipment arrives. This type of proactive customer service will assure customers that you’re aware of their time-sensitive needs. The internal employees, or agents, that your customer interacts with across their customer journey can create a positive or negative experience. Asking agent-specific questions is important to see where internal agents are meeting your company’s customer commitment.

That said, customers don’t always want to talk to someone to get their problem solved — often, they want to quickly resolve their issue themselves. Among consumers, 81% attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative. Further research shows that 71% want the ability to solve most customer service issues on their own. In fact, most customer service interactions fall into a few common categories.

The worst mistake you could make would be to force your customers to repeat themselves. They just had a conversation with your bot, now don’t force them to have the same one with your agent once again. Firstly, they have no interest in switching channels; https://chat.openai.com/ it’s way too much effort. Secondly, calling someone up can feel intimidating, not to mention the fact that the hold time will wear their patience thin. We’re currently having a server issue which has knocked out our service for the time being.

Even if your business doesn’t make a mistake, one of your customers will eventually hit a roadblock that leads them to your customer service team. These are the situations where your service reps make or break the customer’s journey. With Qualtrics Customer XM, you can gather customer feedback from every channel with well-timed customer feedback surveys that add to the customer experience. No matter where your customers are, gather data through targeted customer surveys and apply powerful analytics to the data you gather for better insights. Act on your information in a structured, customer-centric way –When you have the customer data analyzed, turn this information into actionable customer intelligence.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or issues, of course. The issue appears to be due to [explain the issue], which I’ve done quite a few times myself ?. The good news is, I’ve already solved the problem for you by [explain how]. As a rule of thumb, if you promised to get back to a customer, get back to them within 24 hours – even if you don’t have a solution yet! This will show them you didn’t forget about them and you’re working on the problem.

In this article, our panel of experts provide their best practices to help streamline incoming customer queries. Make it easy to solve issues by providing self-service options and being easy to connect with across channels. Next, we’ll cover some best practices your service reps can use daily while interacting with customers to improve their experience. Now that you’ve found the main cause of your customers’ dissatisfaction, it’s time to implement a plan to solve the issue. Did you roll out a new product feature that has a few bugs and is causing consistent complaints across the board?

In this case, they will often turn to your service team for advice, who can recommend products to customers or provide more information about your offering. There will always be those times that a customer inquiry cannot be dealt with by a frontline agent. They may not have the experience, the inquiry might be too technical , or it might require the authorisation of a manager. Having a clear escalation process in place means these types of inquiries can be dealt with efficiently. Many customers who make inquiries could be on the verge of leaving your business.

But, with a little tact (and some honey, instead of gaul, as Dale Carnegie would put it), you can get the majority of customers to make their payment. Open Google Translate in another browser and copy-paste whatever they’re saying. Then, type your response, and Google will spit out what you said in the language you need.

We’ve identified several ways to put your customer service at the top of the game in your industry. Customers often have experience with alternative solutions in the same industry or vertical. They’re making this comparison based on firsthand experience, and their insights can reveal gaps in your product or service that you might not be aware of. When a customer tells you that you’re not as good as a competitor, it’s easy to take it personally. This is actually one of the most direct forms of market research you can get. It clearly signals that the customer sees value in your offering but believes there’s room for improvement.

When a customer calls in with a question or support ticket, how you handle it will ultimately determine your customer’s satisfaction with their experience. Identify gaps in the information provided and incorporate user-generated content and feedback to fill those gaps. Proactively address emerging customer questions and concerns by updating the knowledge base regularly. Personalize responses by addressing customers by their names and customizing answers based on their specific scenarios. Offer additional assistance beyond the initial query to demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. This allows customers to switch between channels effortlessly providing a holistic view of customer interactions, enabling them to provide efficient and accurate query resolution.