The most common customer service complaints & how to handle them

The best way to handle these types of complaints is by being as specific about times and processes as you can possibly be. If you do have to follow up on a case, your service rep should make communication expectations clear. Ask the customer if the proposed frequency works for them, and if not, establish a system that works for both your rep and the customer.

It can be frustrating to proceed calmly without letting the customer know where they went wrong immediately upon leaving a negative review but don’t give in to the temptation. This response thanks the customer for sharing feedback, apologizes for the issue, explains what led to the situation, and shows an understanding of how the issue affected the customer. Mike now knows that his account rep fully understands the reason for the complaint and values his business and feedback. Even if the customer‘s comments don’t make you feel good in the moment, you should still thank them for their insight.

When customers reach out for support, they become flustered if they reach a call center agent who can only provide scripted responses that don’t resolve their problem. They’re also frustrated if they’ve previously talked to another customer support agent, their new rep doesn’t have the context of the situation, and they need to start from scratch. Make sure that your customer support tools can gather the context of your customer’s problem in advance so you know exactly where to route him for help. A virtual assistant can efficiently manage the process of logging and tracking customer complaints. With its ability to automate data entry and organize information, the virtual assistant ensures that no complaint goes unnoticed or unattended. This streamlined approach enables your team to access complaint details promptly and address issues without delay, enhancing overall complaint resolution efficiency.

Efficient Complaint Logging and Tracking

Netflix, for instance, playfully interacts with its customers on social media. They pay attention to what their users are posting and also reply to their comments. And when your customers see that you are resolving their complaints in real-time, the customer churn rate reduces. Let us now look at all these 11 types of customer service in detail, and what they are best for.

All businesses, however, should have a plan of attack – no pun intended – to help navigate how to handle customer complaints as seamlessly, professionally and graciously as possible. Customers who give you another chance and tell their friends, family, co-workers and more about the strong customer care they received from your team. This old-fashioned type of marketing never goes out of style, after all.

Suppose you’ve promised your customer something and never get around to it. Sometimes all it takes is one ignored message or email and you suddenly have an angry customer. Even though you may not know when you will have the product available Chat GPT again, you can help satisfy your angry customer’s impatience by telling them that you will let them know when you get it in. When trying to find a solution, give your employees enough freedom to make judgment calls independently.

It would have been easy to simply ignore this complaint since it is not requesting immediate support, but instead, Coca-Cola shows that it’s listening to its customers and takes their concerns seriously. As one of the world’s most widely used money transfer service providers, Western Union is relied upon by millions of people to send money to friends and family wherever they are in the world. That’s an important service, and the company’s customers depend on it to work perfectly every time. We will initiate the refund/return process as quickly as possible and will keep you informed of the progress. We may need further information from you, such as your reason for return, to help improve our products and services. We’d love to understand the situation better and find a resolution for you as soon as possible.

Product/service based

For example, you can walk a customer through the steps to initiate a return. As a result of differing approaches taken by the numerous search engines in the pursuit of relevant articles, the total number of publishing results varied between databases. We then improved the search results using criteria to find only the articles that addressed our main study questions and objectives. These studies were reviewed by a second reviewer to avoid potential bias. The authors reached a consensus over the final inclusion and exclusion of the articles. After removing duplicates and studies that were not written in English, there were 429 studies remaining.

Automation empowers you to scale your customer service and provide customers with the answers they need, when they need them. But it’s only one piece of the puzzle for delivering fast, personal support to your customers at the scale your business needs. B2C companies can get their ROAR up to 10-20%, since many of their questions are far more transactional in nature and thus are more easily resolved by automation. We’ve seen customers for whom Resolution Bot resolves 33% of the queries it gets involved in and improves customer response time by 44%.

If you can’t solve a customer’s problem immediately, acknowledge that and let them know you’ll be right with them  to work toward solving their problem shortly. At Wishup, we are your reliable partner in providing top-notch virtual assistant services. Our extensive expertise and commitment to excellence empower businesses and entrepreneurs to optimize productivity, save time, and focus on what truly matters – growth and success. Through leveraging the capabilities of a virtual assistant, businesses can streamline complaint handling processes, deliver personalized support, and gain valuable customer insights. Regularly review and analyze this data to spot emerging trends and take proactive measures. Addressing underlying causes can prevent future complaints and create a more customer-centric business.

The biggest indicator of a retailer’s lifespan is its ability to keep customers happy and returning. Not only are there numerous companies that serve just about every retail niche imaginable, but there are different methods of shopping that consumers prioritize. The average unhappy customer tells 9-15 people about their negative experience. Bad word of mouth is a danger in every industry.The common complaints retailers face, such as long wait times, poor communication, and an impersonal customer experience, can all be addressed by savvy businesses.

Live chat support is one of the most effective types of customer service. We say this because, amongst many other advantages, this helps you reduce customer churn. Unfortunately, anyone whose job it is to handle complaints will encounter a customer trying to take advantage of the company’s policies. Strong knowledge of the company’s products will help you identify when some things just aren’t possible. Depending on the severity or topic of the complaint, an unsatisfied customer might react best to a simple, clear apology. Humble people don’t make excuses unless there is a legitimate explanation for the complaint.

General support email templates

One such way is by using Interactive Voice Response (IVR), which utilizes pre-recorded messages and text-to-speech solutions. Used at the beginning of calls, IVR can better route requests, reduce response times and potentially solve issues before requiring a support agent. Many customers will still want to pick up a phone and talk to a live customer service agent, no matter how many new ways organizations offer.

Some customers prefer getting service over the phone, while others prefer the live chat option or regular email communication. Also, some customers prefer utilizing the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate. Customers now differentiate the brands based on the customer service they experience. So, it’s essential to provide an excellent customer experience to make your customers purchase again. Ecommerce customer service mainly simplifies a customer’s shopping journey. As a result, you provide seamless customer service and craft a fine reputation for your business.

This opens up the opportunity for you to further listen to them, while hopefully giving them the understanding that you want to actually hear what they have to say. Below, gain ten tips to help you deal with customer complaints – as gracefully and successfully as possible. If your solution involves giving the customer a gift certificate or free product, reach out to them for feedback after they’ve had another experience with your business. Some issues can be followed up within a few days or even weeks after they were resolved, while more time-sensitive ones warrant a follow-up within a day.

We will provide a full refund or a replacement item, depending on your preference. We value your business and are committed to providing you with the best possible experience. Renewing your subscription ensures that you’ll continue to receive the [products/services] and support you need to achieve your goals.

Providing an omnichannel experience—one that fosters smooth, consistent communication across channels—is key to creating a positive CX. Your organization’s first reply time (FRT)—or how long it takes a support agent to respond to a consumer request—directly impacts customer sentiment. When you have inconvenient hours that lead to a longer FRT, customers can become frustrated. https://chat.openai.com/ With these types of complaints, it’s good to offer solutions or workarounds when available. You could even point them in the direction of another provider if it’s simply something you don’t offer, which can help build credibility with the customer. Time-based complaints are essentially complaints based around something not happening in the timeframe the customer expects.

To proceed, we remove irrelevant studies by assessing titles, abstracts, and keywords, resulting in 175 articles. We progressed to the subsequent phase, where the entire study’s contents were reviewed. The reviewers conducted a thorough analysis of the remaining 99 studies, leading to the exclusion of an additional 26 studies. As a result, the foundation for this SLR was made up of a total of 73 primary studies. After you’ve said you’re sorry, showed your appreciation and overall gave them the support they were hopefully looking for, consider how else you can help support customers who complain. One way to do this is to have upper management follow up with these customers 24 to 48 hours after they have expressed their complaint.

The agent also possesses excellent listening and communication skills since support interactions with customers involve high levels of patience, coherence, and concision. You can analyze customer complaints by logging them into an internal database and developing internal processes to review and learn from them. This can help your team identify any recurring issues and areas of improvement. For a truly stellar customer experience, all effort should be made to completely resolve the issue during the first call.

The best thing you can do for a dissatisfied customer is acknowledge their frustration and validate their feelings. Empathy is one of the most important customer service skills, and acknowledging their frustration helps them feel heard and appreciated. If the customer has an issue with your product or service, having to jump through hoops to get it resolved will only create more frustration.

Trying to navigate this cluster of services without adequate knowledge of the company’s offerings would be a disaster. Beyond empathy and compassion, anyone tasked with handling customer complaints needs to be decisive. The job’s main duty is resolving customer complaints, so the ability to make decisions to resolve complaints quickly is critical. An empathetic person can tell the customer they understand their issue and their feelings. By meeting this need, and understanding a customer’s dissatisfaction, the company will grow a loyal base and find success.

Table 1 below shows the number of articles that were retrieved from each selected database. The primary focus of the planning phase is the preparation of the research undertaking to be carried out in order to perform the SLR. It entails determining the review’s goal, developing relevant hypotheses according to established goals, and devising a thorough review methodology. A systematic review approach should be employed if the review’s primary goal is to assess and compile data showing how a certain criterion has an impact [59]. The generation of meaningful phrases, words, and sentences from an internal representation—converts information collected from a computer’s language into human-readable language [50, 55].

Businesses are already seeing the benefits of artificial intelligence-based customer service. NLP techniques are helping companies connect with their customers better, understand how they feel, and improve customer satisfaction across the board. The availability of automated customer service is not affected by schedules or locations. This allows businesses to provide ongoing customer care so that problems can be resolved as soon as they emerge. Furthermore, it shows that the business is focused on providing service to customers, which is an asset for the general reputation of the brand and trust [80, 111].

If a customer is complaining about having to repeat their issue, the best step you can take is to stop transferring their call. Even if you need to connect the customer with a specialist, reach out to that agent internally and see if you can relay the advice. This may be more tedious, but it will meet the customer’s immediate needs.

#8 Send a follow-up email

Customer Effort Score is a metric used to measure the effort put in by a customer to use your product or service. It also takes into account the effort required for a customer to resolve a product or service related issue. A lower CES score corresponds to higher customer satisfaction, and subsequently, better customer loyalty. Customer surveys can offer very valuable and actionable insights into customer experience as well as the quality of your customer support and service. Identifying different touchpoints in your customers’ journey can help you plan opportunities for proactive customer service.

We are thrilled to announce the soft launch of our new product, [Product name]. As a valued customer, we would like to extend an exclusive invitation to you to be among the first to try our new product. Thank you for your continued support and for considering our request for a referral. Please let us know if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do to assist you.

You should also review these cases to see if there’s a learning opportunity for the agent. Last, it’s probably best if someone other than the original agent responds. When dealing with this type of customer complaint, reps should consider what they can do to provide above-and-beyond customer service.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. For example, the NLP processing model required for the processing of medical records might differ greatly from that required for the processing of legal documents. Although there are many analysis tools available now that have been trained for particular disciplines, specialized companies may still need to develop or train their own models [118]. Listening to your customer complain may not be your ideal scenario, but try your best to really hear what they are saying. Maybe – but hopefully not – they are upset about a specific employee they encountered while working with your business.

The humble telephone is one of the oldest, and often the most trusted forms of support. Despite the remarkable advancements made across customer support tools, the reason why many still prefer phone support is because of the human element. It gives customers a chance to explain their grievances with more clarity, and customer support agents to solve them, with more empathy and patience. Live chat has become a very popular customer support channel because it offers speed of phone support, sans the possible awkwardness for those who are more comfortable dealing with customer support agents online.

• Overall Resolution Rate — the average rate at which customer requests and issues are resolved by your support team.
• Companies are now investing in chatbots, live chat support, mobile messenger support, etc. for better customer service support.
• Companies must remember that great customer support and service, and eventually, customer success is a constant work-in-progress.
• Our team is available to provide you with the support you need to ensure a smooth and seamless product experience.

If you leave it unattended, a minor customer service issue can become a larger brand image problem. What you needed in that situation was an “escape hatch.” Therein lies the danger of poorly implemented automation. If your customers get blocked by a chatbot or get routed to the wrong team, they’ll be just as frustrated as they were when you yelled at that phone menu. But this time, the risk is even greater, since it’s so much easier to cancel, tell friends about your unhelpful support, or both.

“Online resources will help you create the best digital business card whenever you need one.” It also prevents the situation from escalating and shows that your business is reliable and customer-focused. According to a study by HubSpot, 89% of customers are willing to pay a premium for companies that provide quick online solutions without needing phone calls for assistance. Even if they do not complain directly to you, you can still find reviews and complaints online that you can address. Sometimes, if left alone, these complaints can snowball and turn into a much bigger issue, so it’s important to be proactive and address these as quickly as possible. While it’s important to follow your company protocols and guidelines, it’s also important to be able to go the extra mile for your customers.

Can you please provide us with more details about the circumstances surrounding your request for a refund? This information will help us to understand your situation and make an informed decision. Please follow the link below to access the exclusive soft launch and enjoy the new product. Is there any extra info we could help you with to help complete the purchase process? I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to speak with us today during the demo call.

The idea is that the customer will be more loyal to brands that are easier to do business with. By focusing on reducing customer effort, you’ll create a better experience for your customer. CES is a single-item experience metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, a product purchased/returned or a question answered. Customer service metrics are the units of measuring the state of your customer’s happiness levels, which in turn indicates if your customers will buy more, respond well to, and advocate for your brand. We are doing our best to help you receive your item as soon as possible.

One of the methods we use to keep our customer support team on their toes and our company culture on track is a customer service tip of the day. In this post, we’d like to share our best customer service tips with you so you can give your support team a crash course on how to improve customer service and increase customer satisfaction. Understanding your customers’ needs and preferences is essential for continuous improvement. You need to understand what is customer feedback and how you can collect it.

In the near future, however, NLP will be trained to do more than just answer questions; it will be able to deliver complicated solutions that directly address the underlying questions being asked. In the years to come, we can anticipate that NLP technology will become increasingly sophisticated and precise [104, 121, 122]. Summarization systems must understand the semantics and context of information to function properly, however this can be difficult owing to accuracy and readability issues [24, 117].

When an individual reaches out to your business, they may already be upset or concerned. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72 percent of consumers want immediate service. With this in mind, having customers wait for an extended period for assistance can make them even more agitated.

For administrative purposes, chatbots have been used in education to automatically respond to questions from students in relation to the services the school system provides for the academics. NLP is useful for many businesses, however customer service benefits the most. Individuals are actively researching and advancing technology as it serves businesses as well as consumers. For example, it results in cost savings for operations, particularly for businesses, and generates more revenue for businesses [48, 49].

We have our own tool Document360 which is a modern-age tool that supports numerous eCommerce sites with an online self-service knowledge base. As a result, customers will simply understand anything related to your business. Ecommerce customer service is the dedicated support process that assists online shoppers throughout their buying journey. The aim is to proactively offer support channels and promptly address customer inquiries and issues and build strong brand image.

This provided an overview of how the support team was doing and made it easier to identify trends in customer feedback. This explanation outlines the improvement to the service and compensates the customer for his potentially lost revenue. Immediately after thanking the customer, you should apologize for what happened and express empathy by explaining customer queries your understanding of the situation. This will let your customer know that you’ve taken the time to truly listen or read their complaint. Plus, restating the issue can help ensure you did not misinterpret what happened. However, as you‘re well aware, sometimes a complaint comes completely out of left field and you’re not sure what to do.

This article will guide you through some solid customer service strategies that are applicable. Having to deal with complaining callers is the daily reality of call centers. But the majority of these calls are simply asking for help – the caller has a problem they can’t solve themselves, which makes them stressed, frustrated, and angry. If you can handle the call in a friendly and professional manner, you are well on your way to having loyal customers– as solving problems quickly and effectively builds trust in a company well. After the call, you should also investigate what caused the poor customer experience in the first place to prevent it from happening again.

In addition, progressive organizations use social channels to provide customer service proactively. This can be an important competitive differentiator and encourages elevated customer satisfaction and loyalty. Live chat has surpassed email as the most popular digital contact option for online consumers, with 30% of customers preferringlive chat to connect with support agents to reduce wait time. Utilizing the live chat option, you can instantly respond to your customers from your website. As a result, the response time will reduce, and the conversion rate and sales will increase.

To bring success in your eCommerce business venture, customer service plays a key role. The total customer experience is closely intertwined with customer service. To constantly uphold the reputation of your brand, you must improve your customer experience via eCommerce customer service best practices.

Customer service agents help customers pay bills, review or make changes to accounts, handle returns and answer frequently asked questions. If you run a restaurant, you can generally tell who your unhappy customers are. They’ll be the ones scowling at their overcooked food or glaring at their phones while waiting too long for a dish. If your servers pay close attention, ask for feedback often, and work to make problems right, they should be able to turn negative experiences into positive ones. They can also avoid frustrated diners turning to Yelp to write one-star reviews or blasting your brand on social media with posts filled with customer complaints. Although responsive support is important since not all issues and concerns faced by customers can be foreseen, customer support teams must aim at offering more proactive support as it improves customer experience.