Chances are that your one-person home business doesn’t have its own “complaint department”—unless you just assume that one of the many hats you wear in your world of business, work, and family has those words embroidered across the front. Perhaps you’ve been lucky enough not to have to deal with any complaints or difficulties with customers or product—but if you have, how do you handle those complaints?
I’m of the belief that it is better to deal with things quickly than to let them fester. Although I was talking with a friend who said that many complaints resolve themselves if given a little time—so there you have two very different professional opinions on how to handle complaints. I prefer to take things seriously, get all the facts and then try to find out exactly what the “complaining person” wants to have happen or how they’d like to see things resolved. BUT, my friend says she likes to wait a couple days before returning the call or addressing the complaint and finds that often she gets a “never mind” from the person who was so upset and bothered only days before.
I also like to keep a little log or keep track of complaints to see if there are any patterns or issues that pop up again and again. Although most of the time, complaints are isolated, some times there may be “quality control” issues that show up when various complaints and feedback show there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
So, what do you do when you get a complaint from a customer or client? It’s not like we can pass off the unpleasant tasks to someone else when we’re running our own home businesses, so we eventually have to develop some skills and process for handling complaints and trying to keep our customers and clients happy with our products or services. Any tips for the rest of us on you handle complaints?
See Also: Working With Challenging Customers and Clientsand Collecting on Outstanding Accounts