In a restaurant, not too far away, in the not too distant future, a phone rings, a customer complains… and the battle begins!
Handling customer complaints doesn’t always have to be a battle, with the right tools and responses, you can use complaints to your advantage; to help you build your business. BLAST is a great tool used by companies like Yum! (Parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, A&W and Long John Silvers). Train your employees in the basics of handling customer complaints. The acronym stands for:
believe
Hear
Apologize
Satisfy
Thank you
How does your company deal with customer complaints? The easiest way to find out is to pick up the phone and play the part of the complaining customer. What happened? If you were an irritated customer, would you go back? Using the BLAST guidelines allows you to create a standardized method for dealing with your complaints and converting them into loyal customers.
believe
This is the cornerstone of handling a customer complaint. Yes, the client may be lying and wrong about his situation. It is important to understand that your client believes that he has been wronged by his establishment.
Hear
Stop and listen to your customer’s complaint. I’m not sure if it’s natural instinct or just stubbornness. As soon as a customer starts complaining, we start thinking about how we’ll respond to the accusation before we’re done listening, and all too often, we already have the answer ready to fight back. Take a second, relax and listen. Sometimes a complaining customer will be rude, angry, and use vulgar language, stay the course, and remain calm and levelheaded.
When the client finishes venting; In a calm, nonjudgmental tone, he repeats the problem back to him. An example I used at my KFC for a poorly packaged order:
“What I hear you say is that you came ordered and paid for 10 pieces of chicken and when you got home, you only received 8, is that correct?”
By repeating the problem at hand, you have demonstrated your ability to the customer that you heard and understood their problem.
Listen and clarify. Never defend or justify. The customer doesn’t care if they’re understaffed or if they’re having a bad day, they just care about being served. No apologies, just solutions.
Apologize
Always apologize even if you haven’t done anything wrong. From your customers’ perspective, they have a legitimate complaint and expect an apology. It could be as simple as “I’m sorry I bothered you.” or “Sorry, I know how frustrating it is to buy dinner for my family, I just don’t have everything there when I get home.” A sincere apology will usually allay a lot of the customer’s frustration. However, there is an exception to this rule, if a customer calls with a critical complaint, such as food poisoning, do not apologize, it may be construed as an admission of blame, instead check your company’s procedures for such events.
Satisfy
Do the right thing. Ask the customer “What can I do to make this right for you?” Be the judge of what’s fair, of course, but allow them the opportunity to feel empowered about the situation. Many times they can ask to have the problem fixed on their next visit or perhaps to talk to the person who made the mistake and correct it. We used a great system of sending a personalized postcard apologizing for the mistake, it was a couple of sentences handwritten (yes, often misspelled by my team members), but it was personal and always well received. We also always give them the unexpected, maybe a free dessert or extra garnish just to show we care about them.
Thank you
At the beginning, at the end, in the middle; never mind, thank you customer for calling and complaining.
Because? By the simple act of complaining, your customer is telling you “I care about your business and your success.” They are giving you a chance to fix the problem and invite them back so they can give you more of your money. Gives it a different spin, doesn’t it? Thank them for giving you that second chance, for letting you know that something in your restaurant didn’t work the way it normally does, for giving you the chance to make it right, and for the chance not to damage your reputation!
Reputation? I had to throw that one out. You work hard, day in and day out, doing everything you can to make your business the best, and yet one dissatisfied customer can take it away from you. A happy customer will tell two or three friends about a good experience, but a dissatisfied customer will tell at least ten friends about his experience and it always multiplies through word of mouth. For example, when I moved cross country to my new hometown, I was at a Chamber of Commerce event, and being the new person in the group, I introduced myself and what we did. As soon as five minutes had passed, I got a list of 10 restaurants in my area that they thought “needed my services.” Only one person gave me a good restaurant. I didn’t ask, they told me. To this day I still haven’t been to those restaurants as a customer, why do I want to give them my hard earned money, when they made my new friends unhappy? It may not be a rational thought, but it is human nature.
Will some people take advantage of your kindness? Of course, a general rule of thumb that I used in my restaurant was:
The first time I’m ashamed
The second time I’m ashamed, but I’m looking at you,
Third time… Shame on you and I will make the decision on how I will deal with you as a customer.
Keep track of who calls to complain, names, follow-up phone numbers, addresses for your postcards. By using a folder and keeping track of your complaints, you will be able to spot and determine those that would benefit from your new complaint procedures.
Adding BLAST to your expanding toolbox of customer service tools will help you handle customer complaints and turn them around so they can tell their friends what a great service you’ve got!