Dealing with Customer Complaints: It’s Changed Through the Years

There was a time when customers complained only one way – they came back to your store or office and told you their complaint. And if you were a good business person, you corrected the problem. Beyond that, they could tell their friends about your lousy service.

Well times have certainly changed. While customers or clients may still come back to you, they now have a host of ways to voice their concerns thanks to the internet and social media. Telling their friends, which today we call word of mouth, has become something very different than it was only 10 years ago.

Today, if someone doesn’t like your product or service, they tell the world through Facebook, a google review or a host of other online opportunities. And I some cases, the last thing they do is come back to you to ask you to fix it.

One of our clients, who, by the way, gets outstanding positive exposure on social media, cringes whenever he sees the one negative post. And then he complains to us about two things. First, why don’t they just come to him so he can fix it? Second, he wants to know how to make the negative post go away.

Depending on the platform, there may only be one way to make the negative post go away. Contact the person who made it, fix the problem, and then ask them to take it down.

Often the only other solution is to get several positive posts to counteract the negative one. But for most people, one negative post will have a lot more influence than two, three or four positive posts.

So the best solution is to encourage positive online feedback with your customers and clients and do your best every day to provide a great product and service.