While having any kind of bad review about your business isn’t great, having a bad review about your customer service specifically can be really detrimental to your business. This is because your business’s customer service is usually completely within your control. You decide who you hire to work as customer service representatives or who you outsource your customer service work to. So if you’re making bad decisions here, people will start to wonder about what other bad decisions you’re making.
Luckily, there are ways that you can overcome bad customer service and bad customer service reviews. To help you see how this can be possible, here are three ways to overcome bad reviews of your customer service.
Respond To Your Bad Reviews
The first thing you should know about getting bad reviews online is that you need to respond to them. If you let those reviews sit there without responding to them, the reviewer and any reading that review will assume that you just don’t care about the complaint that they’re making. So while it can be awkward, always respond to the bad reviews you get.
Aside from responding promptly and taking responsibility for the issue raised by the customer, it can also help to personalize your response. To do this, address the customer by name and offer solutions to help them with their pain points. Doing so can show that you’re taking the time to read and understand their feedback.
And to help you monitor the reviews of feedback you get, you can use a customer service tracker. With such a tool, you can track and manage customer service interactions and feedback more efficiently. This can include overseeing customer complaints, concerns, and issues and the responses and resolutions to those issues.
Ideally, the Government of Western Australia Small Business Development Corporation suggests that you respond to any bad reviews about customer services as soon as you possibly can in order to keep the issues from escalating. Responding within 24 hours should be your goal.
Make It Up To Them
Just because someone had a bad experience with your customer service doesn’t mean you can turn that experience around with great customer service after the fact. And as a good start, follow up with them to ensure the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction. This is also a good way to check if there’s anything else you can do for them.
To exhibit great customer service to someone who’s been less than impressed by this part of your business, Lindsay Heidbrink, a contributor to BusinessKnowHow.com, suggests that you make it up to them by giving them something above and beyond what they’d expect. This can be something like extra money off of their purchase, a gift card to use in the future, free shipping, or anything else that could help smooth over this situation and potentially get them to share this more positive experience in addition to their negative experience.
Aside from giving them a complimentary product or service or discount codes, another effective way to make it up to customers is to offer them a refund. This can help alleviate any financial losses they may have incurred due to the bad experience. Doing so can also show that you value their support of your business and are willing to make things right.
Incentivise Quality Customer Service
The best way to overcome bad customer service reviews is to just have great customer service to begin with.
Typically, this starts with the people you hire to do customer service for you. By bringing on happy and friendly people to handle customer service issues, you’re more likely to avoid bad customer service. Additionally, if you can find some way to incentivise your customer service reps to offer higher quality service, you could further encourage great customer service from your team.
If you’re trying to deal with some bad reviews regarding your customer service, consider how you can alleviate these issues and get better in the future.
