10 Reasons Why Our Customers Complain

Complaining Customers
Complaining Customers

With the Internet becoming part of our lives users prefer complaining publicly about services or products. According to Conversocial 88% of consumers are less likely to buy from companies who leave complaints unattended. But what about those customers who just did not complain and went away silently? These will be forever lost for a company and will never come back. To prevent customers from switching to competitors businesses should pay more attention to their complaints and address them timely.

However, this is not enough. Complaints are the greatest source of learning, they show us where we fail and where and how we should improve. Here are 10 most common reasons why our customers complain.

1. Not Keeping Promises

If you give a promise ensure you keep it. Some promises sound great but if they have not been kept this may lead to multiple complaints, distrust and switching to competitors. Will you order again from a company which did not deliver in time as promised? I think we all know the answer….

2. Poor Customer Service

When customer service representatives are not trained properly, keep customers waiting for a long time and do not resolve issues, this is called poor customer service. It is very irritating to see rep’s efforts in resolving your issue and at the end having a simple question unanswered or no solution provided. In addition to this, when customers always hear only your voice menu, see offline live chat button and wait about a week for an email reply, they will definitely start complaining. And be sure, they will not complain to your staff, they will turn to social media because they want to be heard.

3. Transferring From One CSR to Another

Poor staff training leads to calls or chats being transferred from one agent to another. And there is nothing more irritating than telling your story again and again. As you can see a human side of your business can sometimes generate more complaints than your operational side.

4. Rude Staff

Do you check conversations and chat records of your staff with your customers? It’d be a good strategy to keep an eye on this as sometimes rude attitude, inability to listen and interrupting customers may become one of the main reasons for your customers to complain publicly and tell the world about your customer service quality. There are also people who treat customers as if they interfere into their daily routine. The way they communicate with people is enough to turn the most mild mannered of customers against your company. Do you have such reps in your company? Keep them away from your customers!

5. No Omni-channel Customer Service

Giving your customers an easy way to get in touch with you is one of the first requirements of good customer service. If your customers do not see convenient ways of getting in touch with your team regarding their questions they will contact your competitors and will tell the world about their experience. Today online shoppers use not only email and phone for communication purposes. Live chat and social media are gaining popularity among consumers and for some customers it is convenient to begin conversation using one channel and finish it using another.

6. Not Listening to Customers

Ignoring your customers and not listening to them is one of the biggest mistakes a customer service rep can make and one of the reasons for customers to complain. Just walk a mile in your customers’ shoes to see what they feel when they are not listened to.

7. Hidden Information and Costs

Play fair with your customers. Keeping some of your fees hidden and uncovering this in the middle of purchasing process is a frequent reason for a human to complain. The impression given is that your company cheats its customers.

8. Low Quality of Products or Services

If you promise high quality of your products or services and what you deliver is of lower quality, then be sure, your customers will share this bad experience publicly and most likely complain in social media networks.

9. Keeping an Issue Unresolved

Unresolved issues and complaints are deadly to any business. If you turn away from your customers and let everything go “as is” then you will lose most part of your customers. But if you keep on resolving issues and complaints improving your service at the same time, then you will win loyal customers who will be glad to share their positive experience.

10. Inaccessibility

How easy is it to contact you? Do you provide enough information about your company? When a customer is seeking assistance there is nothing worse than lack of contact information or unanswered emails and not returned calls. This drives people crazy, especially if they have already paid you.

Losing even a single customer can be very costly for businesses. The art of handling complaints is not only resolving them to customers’ satisfaction, it’s also about improving your business and taking needed measures to preventing such complaints in future. What do you do to prevent customers from complaining?

 

Olga
Latest posts by Olga (see all)

12 comments

  1. I’m in complete agreement to the 10 reasons. Lack of ownership to work commitments and taking the defined systems for granted are the norm of the day. Thanks for highlighting these as are very insightful & focused areas that we need to work on ….

  2. Please the point “3. Transferring From One CSR to Another” whats the meaning of “CSR”

  8. My big concern is that many companies restrict their support to chat screens. The problem lately with chat screens is that when you are asked a question to give a description of your issue, if you try to answer the question in some detail you are very likely to find that the agent has closed the chat screen before you finish your description of the problem or the symptoms. So then you might try again, only to find that the second agent has also closed the chat screen. It is infuriating to the customer. Where are the Consumer advocates?

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