How to Transform Consumer Issues into Business Opportunities
Every company will face unhappy customers at some point, and successfully resolving consumer issues is at the core of brand reputation and longevity. I feel that with the correct approach and procedures, these consumer problems can actually be a gift in the form of an opportunity to strengthen your relationships with your customers and by that improve the customer experience.
Be informed
Obviously, to make good on your shortcomings, you first need to know what troubles your customers are facing — the common concerns, the specific issues, and not forgetting your obligations to protect consumer rights. Thankfully, people like to share, and with the growing presence of online reviews, detailed info on consumer experiences with a business is readily available — and this isn’t just a bad thing.
Rather than seen as a sum negative, insights from such reviews can be taken on board constructively and used to identify patterns in complaints that show up as failing processes or lackluster performance in a particular area. Indeed, reviews can be so useful that every business should actively encourage their customers to leave their feedback after a sale or customer service interaction.
Engage with customers, complaints, and reviews
The consumer public has increasing expectations of customer service, and the people who feel that they are truly being heard are more likely to be satisfied and, in turn, become repeat customers.
By directly responding to your public reviews and facing consumer issues, your business can initiate a respectful dialogue that gets to the root of the problem. Once the issue is understood, an approach to the matter that is built on the tenets of empathy, accountability, and a commitment to customer satisfaction will almost always result in a happy customer.
Indeed, with online reviews so easily published, even the tiny hiccups left unaddressed can add up as more and more members of the public consumers add their own perspectives. This brings up an important point, most customer problems can be resolved promptly and informally, and may simply involve a simple yes/no response or product/policy detail. With the technological advantages available to us today, none of these simple queries should go unanswered, in fact, with AI chatbots, for example, they can be answered immediately.
If a consumer does wish to issue a formal complaint, however, they are no longer likely to feel alone or out of their depth, with step-by-step instructions such as the PissedConsumer guide readily available. Neither party wants the inconvenience of this kind of escalation, however, so consider what strategies you need to follow to prevent things from getting that far. Properly trained staff with the freedom to problem solve on their feet will go a long way to ensuring first contact resolutions, as well as the automated responses mentioned above.
Preventing potential problems
While tuning a bad situation around displays an excellent commitment to customer service and satisfaction, the shine will be taken off this achievement somewhat if the problem keeps recurring. Using these experiences with how to resolve the consumer issue to inform updates to procedures, training content, and overall strategy, your business can better mitigate, or even eliminate, many of the issues that your customers come up against.
While it is impossible to list all the ways in which this can be applied here, reworking things in the direction of simplicity and transparency goes a long way to ironing out many customer issues.
Engaging with and learning from customer feedback from a put-the-customer-first perspective strengthens brand image in the eyes of both existing and prospective customers. So, if your business takes growth from long-term customer loyalty seriously, make it a top priority.
