Monday, September 14, 2020
Responding to dissatisfied customers: the headache for operational staff
When a customer responds to a customer satisfaction survey and expresses dissatisfaction, it's important to get back in touch with them for 2 main reasons: to listen to what they have to say, and to understand the reasons for their dissatisfaction. And this task falls primarily to the operational staff who are closest to the customer's experience.
Branch manager or call center: what's the difference for my customer?
When you're trying to connect your Internet box to the telecom network and you need help from technical support, it doesn't matter whether the person helping you is the person who sold you the box, or in a call center in France or abroad.
If it's the product that's the problem, there's no need to worry, and the most competent person will do the job.
On the other hand, if it's a service rendered (an installation, a vacation, a visit to a store, etc.), it's important to be able to talk to the people who rendered the service, who are the source of the dissatisfaction.
The customer may have felt devalued during the experience. Perhaps you didn't spend enough time with them to understand their needs and respond to their first signs of dissatisfaction. Obviously, if the customer's only response to a satisfaction survey is a terse e-mail, or if someone completely unrelated to the matter contacts him to take stock of the situation, his dissatisfaction is likely to worsen.
Branch manager or call center: what are the differences for my operations?
When a customer expresses dissatisfaction, they may point to a major malfunction: a safety issue, an unprofessional attitude on the part of a member of staff, a clear lack of communication between departments...
In all these cases, only a site manager is in a position to understand, put things into perspective, repair or punish.
And only a site manager who has been made aware of a problem for the tenth time by different customers will have the motivation to change things.
If problems are "handled" by a call center, a great deal of information may be lost between the customer's call and the summary given to operations.
Email or phone call?
According to various studies we have carried out at SatisFactory, the preferred channel for recontacting an alert customer is the telephone. Email is only used to support a discussion or if the customer cannot be reached by phone.
This takes time and can make operational staff nervous. Who enjoys calling an unhappy customer? However, it turns out that the tone is much more cordial and the arguments much more measured when the customer speaks face-to-face with a site manager, for example.
Conclusion
Our conclusion on the problem of calling back dissatisfied customers is not to the advantage of operational staff. They're the ones who have to do it. And do it in the most direct and unfiltered way possible: by telephone. It's the only way to give meaning to the principle of listening to customers, to turn a glitch into a nugget and, if possible, to improve operations.
