Consumer complaint behavior can take place in a variety of forms. While it is usually because a customer may be dissatisfied over the quality of the product sold or the service that is being offered, more often than not there may be other reasons as to why the customer is also complaining.
Before we can figure out ways to resolve consumer complaint behavior, it is important that we delve into the forms of behavior that consumer complaints may take in the first place and the kinds of people or personalities who may be liable to complain about the products or services being sold or offered.
Forms In Which Consumer Complaint Behavior May Take Place
1-Barnacle Customers
These are the kinds of customers who just need an excuse to complain- the kinds of people who relish the notion for complaining just because they can.As such these people may wage war with over you over literally nothing.
2-Freeloading Customers
Their complaining behavior takes place in the form of whining and extracting their sympathies or even guilt in certain cases from the staff or people in charge because they believe that they have the divine right to either demand free stuff or ask that the current prices of products be reduced.
3-The Well Meaning Customer
These are the customers who have actually found a problem with the service being offered or the product you sell and it needs to be fixed.
These customers are the ones whose behavior you can most rely on. Very often they neither argue nor fight but phrase the problem they are facing in a very polite, well mannered way and expect it to be addressed as such.
Even if it is the quality of service that is being offered, more often than not you should heed these customers as what they are saying is not out of spite or for the sake of complaining; ensuring that your wait staff is politer for instance can make certain that your other customers don’t stalk off disappointed or even worse- don’t return after their first visit.
4-The Chronic Complainer
These are the customers who may behave in an annoying fashion or may seem to be making a fuss over nothing by frequently calling you or contacting you over some little problem or the other which they have supposedly discovered in the product or service however these customers are sometimes also the kind you should listen to. They may seem distracted or may seem to be complaining over little things that may seem relatively unimportant however all you need is some patience because these are the kind of customers who will behave as positively in the future as they were behaving adversely in the past!
Ways To Deal With Customer Complaints
However as troublesome as customer complaints may seem, it is always very significant that they be promptly dealt with before they stir more of a mess for you.Hence you must firstly look at the kind of complaining customers on your hand.
To do so you must be able to identify whether it is a chronic customer, a ‘barnacle’ customer or even a meek customer and accordingly deal with them.
For instance the meek customer is someone who may seem very suppliant and calm however this person is the kind of customer whom you need to probe more in order to find out what is wrong and if done so in a tactful way, you will be able to find out what’s wrong and hence there will be no further complaints and you can be sure that the meek customer will be not so shy the next time and will in fact, will probably be singing your praises by the dozen the very next time!
On the other hand then you have the aggressive customer- this person is the kind who will NOT be shy of letting you know what they found wrong with the product or service at hand.
The smart way to deal with people like this is to be calm and ask them, ‘Yes I apologize for that…How else I may help you’ and you will be surprised at how coolly they will respond!
Either way the important thing is to know the kind of customer you are dealing with, the sort of complaints that they face or to handle their complaints in a very smooth way which proves satisfactory to them so that the next time everything goes according to plan!