Even if you are offering finest product/service, the complaints arising from customer’s end are inevitable.

Customers usually expect the call center department to handle their complaints in best possible manner. To maintain this trust in the mind of customers, you need to streamline your complaint handling process.

Some essential techniques for better complaint resolution in contact center include:

1. Allow Agents to Refund Immediately

You can save money and time by empowering customer support representatives to issue refund immediately related to product/service. It will be costlier for the call center firm to escalate the issue instead of returning the money immediately. Therefore, empowering the customers for these scenarios can be a feasible decision.

2. Take Complaints as Improvement Opportunities

Instead of considering the complaint as a negative point, you can use it as an opportunity of improvement. The complaints help you identify the weak points related to products/services giving you a scope of improvement. Therefore, you can thank your customers for notifying you about the complaint. It will definitely help in building trust among customers and reduce frustration caused due to complaint. You can ultimately help your client company to improve their process, which will ultimately reduce the frequency of complaints in future.

3. Have a Meeting to Sort Out Reasons Behind the Complaints

You can conduct meeting on regular basis to analyze the root causes of the complaints. In these sessions, each team member must give their opinion on how to resolve the common complaints arising from the customer’s end. The team can also take the issue with the concerned department after finding major cause due to which complaints occur on regular basis.

4. Monitor Social Media Channels

The customers in present scenario use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to post complaints related to a brand. Therefore, companies need to be active on these platforms to provide appropriate response to the customers. This can be done by giving assurance that your team is working on rectifying the issue. You can also give the specific date until which the issue will be resolved. Make sure to utilize ‘Direct Message’ option of Twitter to receive contact details of the customer. 

5. Focus on Improving First Call Resolution

This is the most important metric that gives emphasis on quality related to resolution of complaint. It will make sure that agents give focus on resolving the issue rather than escalating it. Customers prefer getting their complaints resolved on the very first contact rather than waiting long for the same. Ultimately, the rate of customers leaving the firm will reduce to substantial level.

6. Differentiate General Inquiries from Complaints

In various contact centers, the complaint logging is done incorrectly by the agents. As a result, various general queries are also logged as the complaints. Proper monitoring of calls is necessary to ensure that logging is done properly. This will ultimately reduce the total volume of complaints in the contact center.

7. Contact the Customer Through Phone

Even if the customer has registered the complaint through another medium, use only phone to contact him/her back. The conversation through phone gives chance to remove any misunderstanding from both the ends. Also, the medium is private and helps in analyzing the complaint easily.

8. Prepare a Policy for Handling Difficult Customers

Difficult customers consist of the abusive and furiated ones, which need to be handled very carefully. You need to have a policy to handle this segment of customers and the policy should be part of agent training sessions. The policy should also be regularly updated after analyzing the response of the customers in these situations. You should ensure that agents practice the scenarios on regular basis related to handling difficult customers.

9. Ask Questions

Several times, you need a lot of information from customer’s end to find resolution of the complaint. In order to derive the information, the agents must ask various questions from the customers. It will not only pave the way in resolving the complaint but also instill trust among customers. Make notes of every single detail described by the customer. But avoid interrupting the customer as it may make him/her more furious.

A responsible call center makes sure that every complaint is resolved as per the satisfaction of the customer. Ultimately, it becomes one of the Trusted Outsourcing Vendors in its Region.