If customers highlight an overpriced, poor, or unreliable service, they are not condemning your organization to redundancy, but offering you a great opportunity to see your organization from another’s point of view.

 

This feedback, termed customer complaint, can prove to be invaluable. And how your organization handles it is not only crucial in ensuring that the customer does not leave but also essential in increasing their loyalty and in gaining insight into the marketplace.

 

But, since the nature of complaints is usually negative, most employees tend to avoid complaints, ignore them and sometimes become hostile towards those who complain. 

 

As a result, their organization misses the opportunities to increase loyalty and to gain market insight. Even worse, complaints spiral into sheer loss of their customers. This training is designed to help organizations prevent these. 

 

It will help employees appreciate how complaints benefit their organization, develop positive attitude towards complaints, handle them effectively, and be able to turn potential loss of customers into increased loyalty.

 

 

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The Learning Journey

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The training starts with the foundational knowledge of what triggers customer complaints and how complaints benefit organizations.

 

Then we highlight the statistics on the percentage of dissatisfied customers who complain so as to communicate the fact that, primarily, customers who complain are actually doing the organization a favour.

 

With the basics covered, we move onto a spectrum of listening styles, what active listening is, and how to use it to establish rapport with customers for efficient handling and recovery during complaints.

 

Next, we examine various types of complainers and different complaint handling scenarios to help the participant come to terms with best practices and understand the guidelines for handling complaints.

 

The scenarios expose the participants to a wide variety of situations. Critical examples are provided on how a particular situation can be addressed poorly and what better alternatives exist in handling such situations. By observing bad attitudes and conversations, the participants can infer a pattern of behaviour and quickly learn what doesn't work and why.

 

This helps them to remember the skills longer and apply them more successfully in real world situations.

 

Then, the participants are taken through assertive communication and the body language required for efficient handling of complaints.

 

In the last part of the course, we take a holistic view of what happens in a typical customer journey so as to help the participants understand the points of intervention where they must apply the complaint handling strategies for recovery and retention to be successful.

 

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Training Objectives

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After completing this course, participants will be able to:

 

- Hold a positive attitude towards complaints and appreciate how they benefit their organization

- Use active listening techniques when handling complaints to help establish rapport and leave a positive impression

- Respond to common challenging scenarios and handle complaints in an efficient manner

- Communicate assertively with customers when handling complaints for a win-win outcome

- Increase the effectiveness of their communication with others using body language

- Handle customer complaints effectively and turn complaints into opportunities for increased loyalty

- Establish a good customer feedback system for their organization

 

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Training Outline

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Session 1: Overview

 

- Learning Objectives

- Pre-Assignment

- Pre-Training Assessment

 

Session 2: Nature of Complaints

 

- Why People Complain

- What Customers Complain About

- Learning from Statistics

- Why Customers Leave

- People's Attitude Towards Customer Complaints

- The Correct Attitude Towards Complaints and Handling Complaints

- Effect of Resolving Complaints

- Making the Complaint Process Easier

- Practice: Past Experiences

 

Session 3: Listening Skills

 

- Types of Listening

- Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Listening Type

- Understanding Active Listening

- Applying Active Listening to Handling Complaints

- The Technique

- Example

- Practice: Active Listening Case 1

- Practice: Active Listening Case 2

- Listening Skills: Take Away

 

Session 4: Classification of Complainers

 

-Types of Complainers

- Best Strategies to Deal with Each Type of Complainers

- What to be Aware of When Dealing with Each Type to Prevent the Encounter from Becoming Unproductive

 

Session 5: Complaint Handling Scenarios

 

- Following a Strict Company Policy

- Using the Audience

- Impressing Others

- Dealing With an Angry Customer

- Slow Speaker

- Blaming Others

- Blaming the Customer

- A Summary of Guidelines

 

Session 6: Assertive Communication

 

- Understanding Assertiveness

- APA Model

- Assertive, Passive, and Aggressive Behaviour: Understanding the Differences

- How to Be Assertive

- Constructing Effective Assertive Sentences for Handling Complaints

- Practice: Assertive Case

- Tips on Assertiveness

 

Session 7: Body Language

 

- Critical Postures and Gestures to Observe When Handling Complaints

- How Not to Appear Defensive and Confrontational

- Ideal Postures for Making Customers Feel Calm and Cared For

- Non-Verbal Assertiveness

- Practice: Non-Verbal Signals

- Case Study

 

Session 8: Typical Customer Journey

 

- Ideal Situation

- When Things Go Wrong

- Points of Intervention

- Applying Complaint Handling Strategies

 

Session 9: A Personal Action Plan

 

- Starting Point

- Key Things I Learned

- What I Want to Improve on the Job

- How I Will Do It

- Summary