How do you deal with dissatisfied customers?

Managing your dissatisfied customers is an essential part of the Feedback Management program. It's also known as customer alert management or the feedback loop.

The aim is to take care of customers who have given off weak signals, and to identify areas for improvement in the customer journey.

Which contact channel should you choose?

The most direct way to contact a dissatisfied customer is by telephone. And the person best placed to make this call is the manager of the business unit that is the source of the dissatisfaction. This could be the manager of the establishment, the hotel, a sales outlet manager...

It's not always easy to call a dissatisfied customer. It's easier to hide behind a standardized e-mail, which also avoids direct confrontation. But is it the best communication channel in this case?

For one of our retail customers, and given the reluctance of operational staff on this particular point, we carried out a pilot with the most enthusiastic managers. After 2 months, the results were clear: the managers in question were delighted with the experience, and asked the Project Committee to roll out the system. Why was this? Not only were the customers called pleasantly surprised to be considered, but their dissatisfaction could be resolved at no additional cost to the company.

Generally speaking, recontacted customers are satisfied that the company has listened to them. They understand that they haven't wasted time filling in a satisfaction survey. They have the opportunity to express their irritation. By telephone, this is often done in a courteous and constructive manner.

How do you keep track of your dissatisfied customers?

Encouraging your operational staff to call back dissatisfied customers is therefore essential to your Feedback Management program. The best way to do this is to make follow-up a regular part of customer satisfaction reporting (on the same level as NPS or other satisfaction indicators).

In this way, a dashboard showing alert KPIs can take the following form:

Similarly, being able to track the processing of alerts over time and in a slightly more specific way is of great benefit to operational staff.

Setting recontact objectives is a good idea. It's better to use absolute numbers rather than percentages, as achieving a percentage target is likely to discourage the operational staff with the lowest satisfaction levels... who no doubt also have several other projects on the go.

Conclusion

Dealing with dissatisfied customers is a crucial issue for companies that want to differentiate themselves through their quality of service.

We mustn't overlook the impact this can have on operational staff, and the tendency they may have to minimize or postpone this mission. But that's the price we have to pay for our commitment to continuous improvement in customer satisfaction. And this logic necessarily involves employees in the field.