Keeping customers satisfied is a goal of every business. Customer complaints are not uncommon, and range from minor 'easy fix' problems to major problems. Research shows that a dissatisfied customer will tell 9-15 people about their experience. If the customer chooses to share their experience online this will be seen by significantly more people. The more companies take complaints seriously the more likely they are to retain customers and protect brand loyalty, advocacy and satisfaction.
We help businesses track the number of complaints they receive and categorise them into key areas so action can be taken to remedy the problem. We achieve this by utilising our industry-leading text analytics software. Complaints can be collected using an internal customer feedback database or gathered online from social media and review websites.
We start by categorising complaints into themes. These may include dealing with call centre staff, navigating the website, poor product range and quality, store cleanliness etc. We then identify exactly what the root cause of the issue is through word counts, word association and sentiment analysis.
For example, complainants who talk about dealing with call centre staff may use words like delays, rude, uninformed, unprofessional etc. We can then diagnose which areas are priorities for future action and provide recommendations on how to reduce complaints in these areas. In this case, we may recommend additional training for call centre staff, better performance management from team leaders or introducing a better system to reduce call waiting times.
Once remedial action has been put in place we continue to measure complaints to see if the number of complaints in this area has reduced.
Tips for collecting customer feedback
- Install a customer feedback portal so employees have a central database to record all comments from customers – these can be positive and negative
- Record all comments made on social networking and review websites
- Include comments from all customer communications - telephone interactions, letters, text messages, suggestion forms etc.
- Include a comments and suggestions section on your website and include the web link on any receipts or invoices
- Incentivise customers to leave feedback e.g. prize draw to win £100 of Amazon vouchers
- Incentivise employees to ask customer to leave feedback e.g. staff night out for the team that collects the most customer comments
Contact us for more information on how Robust Research & Insight can help you measure and remedy your customer complaints.