Dealing
with angry customers is never enjoyable. It is a bad experience for
your staff and for the customer involved. Having angry customers on a
regular basis damages your business and your reputation. However, if
they are angry due to avoidable mistakes in customer service, rather
than fundamental problems with your products, then it is easy to ensure
that you deal with the problem and make angry customers a thing of the
past.
To do this, you need to make all your company's systems more efficient
and customer-focused. Sales, IT, customer service, finance and
administration all need to work together, not against each other, for
the benefit of the customer. The customer is not necessarily always
right, but an effective business needs to assume that they are, until
they receive evidence to the contrary. They need to take the customer
seriously, and gain their confidence and respect. They also need to be
able to reassure the customer that they are able and willing to work to
solve the problem. To achieve this, there are two key things you need to
do: improve staff training and company culture, and introduce a CRM
system.
Front-line staff working in sales and customer service should be
well-trained enough to be able to deal with customers problems
effectively and quickly. Good training is particularly important for
sales staff; as their main focus is not customer service, and they are
likely be working on commission, they may be less customer-focused than
some other staff. If you find that you cannot get the quality of staff
in customer service that you need to deal with customers sensitively,
consider raising their wages: the cost may well be more than met by a
reduction in customer complaints. You also need to ensure that the
company culture and managers attitudes support responsive customer
service. If staff are under pressure, for example, to complete calls in a
certain amount of time, then service standards will slip – leading to
angry customers.
The most important single thing that you can do to make angry
customers a thing of the past is to introduce a CRM, or customer
relationship management system. A good CRM system will help you to keep
customers happy, as it provides an effective, organised set of systems
designed to do so. It will provide your front-line staff with the
information, skills and prompts that they need to help deal with unhappy
customers effectively, before they get angry.
It allows you to integrate different functions within your business, so that they all work together to improve the customer experience. It gives staff vital information that can help them anticipate and deal with problems before they happen. A CRM system can be tailored to an individual business, and can include a number of different elements: software, web programs, databases and information sharing policies can all play a part.
It allows you to integrate different functions within your business, so that they all work together to improve the customer experience. It gives staff vital information that can help them anticipate and deal with problems before they happen. A CRM system can be tailored to an individual business, and can include a number of different elements: software, web programs, databases and information sharing policies can all play a part.