While customer complaints may seem like a negative experience, they can also be a positive experience. When you get a complaint from a customer, you should make sure to efficiently and effectively handle the complaint, or you may be in breach of your obligations as an online business. Complaints can be more complicated if your business operates online, as you may be contending with public complaints online or issues that may not arise in a traditional brick-and-mortar business. This article will outline what:
- your obligations are when a customer makes a complaint;
- practices you can put in place to handle customer complaints effectively; and
- remedies you can provide to resolve the complaint.
What Are My Obligations When a Customer Makes a Complaint?
If you provide goods or services, you must uphold specific minimum standards. If customers make a complaint because they feel that you have not maintained a minimum standard, there are certain steps you must take. First, you must promptly and fairly handle the complaint, or you will not be upholding your obligations under consumer law. A customer can complain to the Commerce Commission, launching a more comprehensive investigation, which can be challenging for your business to manage.
How Should My Online Business Handle Customer Complaints Effectively?
Create Good Systems
Creating an effective and efficient policy for complaints will show your customers, investors, and potential clients that you are a sophisticated business that can deal with and incorporate feedback. Your staff should always be professional and polite. Every staff member should be equipped to deal with customer complaints.
If you deal with complaints published publicly online, you should have an employee who monitors your social media accounts and web presence to look for complaints. You could even write a draft script for employees to reply to online complaints. Responding calmly and reasonably will diffuse the situation and allow you to publicly protect your business’s reputation. After this, move the conversation to a private channel to find out more.
Make It Easy for Customers to Make Complaints
It would be best to make it easy for your customers to make complaints. This will prevent them from posting them online in a public forum. It depends on how you operate your business and how it is best to allow customers to make complaints. If you had a brick-and-mortar store, you could keep a physical feedback form in your stores. However, given you are running an online store, you will need to find another way to allow customers to make complaints. If you sell your goods through a website, you could provide a feedback form on your website. If you are selling through an app or online marketplace, you could send a link to a form when you send out a confirmation of purchase email.
You should make sure to gather certain pieces of information, including:
- the details of the problem, including its potential causes and when the trouble began;
- the contact details of the complaint maker; and
- how they purchased the goods or services.
What Remedies Should I Provide to Resolve the Complaint?
There are three main remedies that you can provide if someone makes a complaint. They are a:
- replacement;
- refund; or
- repair.
If you find that a customer’s complaint is valid, you may provide them with a remedy. These may be appropriate in situations where the customer has received:
- a faulty or damaged product;
- substandard services; or
- their goods exceptionally late.
Discuss the remedies available with the customer, but in most cases, you have control over which method you choose.
Some complaints may not warrant a remedy. For example, in instances when the customer has chosen the wrong product or they have damaged it. In these cases, you do not need to provide a remedy for the customer. However, you should still make sure that you treat the customer fairly and deal with the complaint properly. You cannot just ignore a complaint if you think it is invalid. Instead, use the complaint as an opportunity to improve your business practices and retain the customer.
Need help marketing your digital business? Use LegalVision’s free Marketing Plan for Digital Businesses template to create a robust marketing plan.
Key Takeaways
Receiving a customer complaint is never a fun experience. However, ensuring that you have good processes in place to deal with complaints, handling them promptly, and providing a suitable remedy are ways to retain customers even after one has made a complaint.
If you need help understanding how your online business can best handle complaints, our ecommerce lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. You will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. Call us today on 0800 005 570 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is generally best to avoid doing this. You are not allowed to misrepresent your business, and some people see deleting feedback from unhappy customers or complaints as misrepresentation, as it only shows one side of your business.
No, it is up to you what remedy you want to provide a customer. For example, it may be more suitable to simply replace the damaged good simply in some situations.
We appreciate your feedback – your submission has been successfully received.
