Q: What should I do if a customer complains about our product?
Dec 08 2009
Answered by: Marc Barber Ask a question
In some industries, money-back guarantees are commonplace – and in any case if you sell your products by credit card, you will find that if a consumer complains to the credit card company, the money will almost always be refunded to the customer to your cost. Distance selling means that a customer is legally entitled to a seven-day cooling-off period in which payment has to be refunded.
Perhaps you could adopt a money-back guarantee or some sort of guarantee of customer satisfaction. Most businesses are happy to offer these guarantees, because the number of complaints or people who ask for refunds is usually tiny, but it encourages more people to buy from you in the first place.
As a basic premise, you should follow the policy that complaints are valuable feedback and a customer who has complained but has been dealt with satisfactorily can turn into one of your most loyal and supportive customers. A survey for the National Consumer Council in 2007 found that 44 per cent of consumers who feel let down or annoyed by a company simply take their custom elsewhere. Research among Austrailian consumers suggests that an unhappy customer will tell up to eight other people about their bad experience, potentially damaging the company’s reputation further. By contrast, 70 per cent of customers who complain and whose complaint is resolved satisfactorily will carry on buying from the company, or 95 per cent if the complaint is resolved immediately.
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