Remember,
remember …
- The customer is always wrong.
- Say sorry there is nothing you can possibly do …you know this is not a proper sorry or admission of responsibility. Most of these awful complainers will go away, so there is no need to change anything the company does.
- Send a holding acknowledgement to every complainer as soon as possible. The customer will think it is an answer and warm to your company before reading to become disappointed and angry. You can then take many weeks before sending another letter saying there is nothing you can do. Ignore any logical or valid points made by the customer.
- The last thing you want is for the Chief Executive to get involved. Tell the customer the Chief Executive does not get involved with customers. Threaten the sites on the web who publish your CEx’s e mail address.
- Ask the customer to speak to another section of the company especially one at war with your department. Monitor progress as if the other department tries to help the customer or even thinks about offering compensation pull rank and countermand any positive action. You know any compensation paid comes out of your bonus pool.
- If the customer says you are one organisation and the complaint ought to be handled by a single point of contact say no, no, we cannot possibly waste our time doing that. Better to organise so that every time the customer wants to continue raising their complaint a different member of staff answers the call or e mail so the customer has to start from the beginning again allowing a refer to other department response to be issued again. The overall aim is to wear the customer down so they give up. Beware of Mr S who always seems to do well out of complaining.
- If the customer wants to escalate the complaint to a manager, put them on hold and transfer them after a long wait to the cancellations or lost property department. Thank heaven, you know all your competitors are not much better and many are even worse.
- If the complaint is about a technical service matter where you have downgraded their service to save money then blame - the neighbours, new building, the weather, the Council or other contractors digging up the road. Do not even think of offering a solution.
- Try to recruit people who have worked for insurance companies as they have exactly the right skills of saying no and reading out the fine print, or your internal rules the customer has never seen, to say your company has no responsibility.
- You are bound to get some clever dick who says their time is valuable as well … or says he or she pays your salary …
What’s this envelope … no it cannot be! … redundancy for me … I
am losing my job …I thought it was only the helpful people who lost their jobs
here … the liquidator and MD say my company has ceased trading because a
competitor has looked after its customers … never … I thought we were all as
bad!
I will have to complain …oh dear … I will have to use our own
complaints procedure.
Tracy
Thanks to EE, Barclays Bank, Santander Bank, WD and Heath for giving
me material to get started. - Archie
