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Listening to customer feedback, and logging it, can help you get ahead of recalls and lawsuits.
What if there was a way to get in front of a recall?
A way to minimize any damage to your reputation?
Such a thing exists, and you might be surprised to learn it’s something you already have.
The best strategy to maintain your reputation is combating small issues before they morph into major problems. By listening to customer grievances early on, you can hone in on recurring complaints. These recurring complaints may be issues that later turn into necessary recalls. If you identify them before your regulating agency, you can control your reputation instead of having the recall process control it for you.
Why Customer Feedback is Important
Nobody wants to hear that customers are unhappy, but those unhappy customers are a key component to bettering your business. If they have complaints about service, you can work to address individual problems or company culture. If one customer calls to complain, it’s almost certain that others have had the same issue, but walked away without saying a word, taking their patronage with them. These vocal customers cue you in to issues that are costing you business.
If a customer has a complaint about the quality or safety of an item, they are helping you get ahead of the recall process. When these customer complaints are properly recorded, they can help you identify issues that may necessitate a recall voluntarily. Without these complaints, you may not know about issues until your regulating agency makes you aware of them. The former is a far better position to be in.
CSRs are Your First Line of Defense
Customer service representatives are extremely important in handling customer feedback. Not only are they the people who ultimately make or break customer retention on a one-to-one basis, but the data they collect helps the company at large improve products and services.
Feedback should be logged and recorded every step of the way. Not only will it help you improve your business, but it also gives you data to analyze. This data can then be used to identify trends. When bad trends are picked up on quickly, you can make efforts to head them off, taking control of recalls or fixing them before they develop into lawsuits.
Because recording data is so vital, all CSRs should be trained in the appropriate data entry system. The software that you use should be simultaneously efficient, detailed, and user-friendly. If you have the data, but it is too hard to enter or access, you open yourself up to more serious lawsuits as you had the information, but couldn’t use it due to disorganization.
Shifting Views on the Unhappy Customer
It would be seemingly wonderful if every customer was a happy customer one hundred percent of the time. But without complaints, you’d never know how to grow and improve. You wouldn’t be able to head off big problems before they got out of control. For these reasons, it makes more sense to be grateful to the unhappy customer, and to integrate that appreciation for customer feedback into your company culture.