Addressing and resolving customer feedback and complaints

Every business owner will inevitably face receiving negative feedback and complaints from customers at one point or another.  So, it’s important to learn how to deal with them effectively – otherwise founders risk their business gaining a bad reputation.

This page explores the best practices and tools that are available to entrepreneurs, so that they can improve loyalty, appease customer frustrations and turn every piece of feedback into an opportunity for improvement.

Books:

1. Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer – Jay Baer explores the importance of addressing customer complaints and how it can lead to increased loyalty.
2. Never Lose A Customer Again: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days by Joey Coleman – Award-winning speaker and business consultant Joey Coleman details easy to action steps that result in lasting change, increased profits and lifelong customer retention.

Articles:

1. Customer complaints: definition, examples and resolution tips by Zendesk – This article by Zendesk outlines how to handle customer complaints in an impactful way.
2. Customer Complaints: 8 Common Complaints & How to Resolve Them by Hubspot – Here, Hubspot breaks down the different types of customers complaints as well as the steps your team can take to resolve each one.
3. Step-By-Step Guide: How to Handle Customer Complaints by Help Scout – This guide breaks down how to handle customer complaints and how to prevent them taking a toll on you emotionally.

Tools:

1. Customer support software – Customer support software can be used to manage and track customer complaints. Examples include Zendesk, Freshdesk or Intercom.
2. Feedback collection tools – There are tools out there that can be used to gather insights from customers, so that you can actively prevent any negative reviews or feedback. Examples include SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics.
3. Social listening tools – Tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social can be used to monitor and respond to customer feedback on social media platforms.

The above resources provide great insight into dealing with customer complaints and feedback. In utilising these resources, founders can improve their customers’ experience, boosting customer loyalty and strengthening their business in the long-term.