Service Businesses: How to Answer Complaints and Keep Customers Coming Back

Running your own business means that you will have to communicate with many different people — different types of customers. Being successful in your field of business comes hand in hand with having to deal with people who will simply not be happy with your services.

The key thing in this situation is to remember that you will have to be flexible and helpful so that you don’t lose these customers for good. If you’re struggling with making that happen in your day-to-day business, here are some tips which will help you keep your customers coming back.

1. Try to Understand Their Problem

The most important part of dealing with customer complaints is not showing your frustration. While their issues might be unreasonable, you still have to listen to everything they have to say since they decided to put their trust in your services.

Being understanding is very important in this situation so that they can feel like you are taking them seriously. An approach you can use to make them feel like they have your full attention is to repeat their issues back to them.

How it’s Done

For example, if they tell you that their main issue was that your employees did not arrive on time to pick up certain furniture, you can say back to them “If I understand correctly, your main issue was the delay of our services.”

This will also help them see that they had no problem with the services themselves but rather a factor that wasn’t necessarily involved as this might have been caused due to traffic.

Discussing the issue and understanding the customer’s point of view will help you appear friendly and happy to help them while still remaining professional and handling the situation correctly. Viewing such complaints as a way to improve your business and services is exactly what will help you stand out from your competitors.

2. Investigate the Issue

In some cases, the problem’s source might be inside of your own company. A new employee or someone who has a history of subpar performance can frustrate a customer. It can cause them to feel like they are not being treated in the way you promised.

You will most likely have to invest in providing better training services for your new employees. People who are still new on the job might not know how to handle customers as well and could make simple mistakes which can annoy some customers.

On the other hand, sometimes it is a good idea to let an employee go if they are not being able to keep up with the standards of your company. Keeping them around will simply give your business a bad reputation and you will end up with many more customer complaints in the future.

Treat Each Complaint Individually

When you see that a customer is complaining about the quality of your services, you should work on improving your service for them based on their individual needs.

If you see that the problem exists because of the behavior of one of your employees, you can either train them to be more flexible and polite or you can look for someone more suitable for that certain task.

3. Offer them a Discount for the Future

There’s another thing you can do in order to increase your chances of handling the customer’s complaint with professionalism. Find a way to apologize to your customers with an incentive (not a bribe).

Offering your customers a discount code after they have made a complaint will show your good intentions and desire to earn back their trust.

By offering them a discount, your customers will be more than tempted to use your services again, even if they came across some issues the first time around. This time though, you should ensure you don’t make the same mistake that nearly drove them away, again.

4. Ask for Feedback

The very last step to answering a customer complaint is to make sure your customers were satisfied with the experience. The best way to make sure of that is through asking them for feedback either directly or indirectly.

The direct way is to ask them through your email conversations or even through a phone call, depending on what type of customer services you provide.

Asking them directly if they were happy with your customer services and what could be improved will help you appear friendly and helpful while still caring about the professionalism of your brand.

The Indirect Way

The other way you can ask for feedback is through a feedback form you can send to your customers as an email. You will be able to ask more questions and they will be able to reply at their convenience. If all customers receive this form, that could increase the number of responses and constructive feedback

Look for Patterns and Trends

On top of that, you will also be able to easily collect and review all the data from your customers with minimal effort.

Getting feedback from more customers gives you the ability to spot any weaknesses or frequency of specific complaints. You can then work on successfully improving these areas of your services.

Provide Your Customers with the Best Services Possible

You might get disappointed when you get complaints from your customers. You need to keep in mind that situations like these will help you improve the way you work and handle your business.

The more you work towards making sure you provide them with the best services possible, the more they will appreciate your efforts, even if they come across an issue.

At the end of the day, your customers are the reason why your service business is still up and running. Answering their complaints by being friendly and helpful while still remaining professional is what will help your business grow and overcome past issues.

Want to learn about how service business management software can help you manage and grow your business? Book a free, private demo of Vonigo.