Writing Responses to Complaints

CHAPTER - 3

WRITING RESPONSES TO COMPLAINTS

 

Writing responses to complaints is important because it leads to customer retention and preserves the positive company reputation.

A well-written and well orchestrated response to customer complaints may result in increased marketability for your company. Response to a complaint is in turn becomes an advertisement for the company or the organization.

The response to a complaint letter may be uploaded in social networking websites which may result in welcoming more number of customers.

How to write a strong customer complaint response.

When writing a customer complaint response letter, consider following these steps:

1. Read the entire complaint letter and understand before drafting response letter.

2. Include details from customer's complaint

3. Respect the customers' feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. Empathise with them.

4. Apologise for the inconvenience.

5. Include if templates available for response to complaints

6. Explain what may have caused the inconvenience.

7. Propose an immediate solution such as replacement, rescheduling or refund.

8. Don't give tall or false promises.

9. Explain how you can improve the customer's experience in the future

10. Offer an incentive like discount or concession or better version of the product

11. Encourage further customer response.

12. Reply to any follow up questions or doubts.

 

Tips for responding to customer complaints

When writing customer complaint response letter, consider the following tips:

• Use the customer's name

• Directly addressing your customer by name helps you appear more personable and less like a company representative or formal one.

•Refer the complaint letter when needed

• This is helpful for future reference and fact checking by the company.

• Keep your customer's position in mind

•If your customer is an important stakeholder, you may need to take extra consideration before writing your letter.

• For a customer you have never personally interacted with before, your letter may benefit from taking a friendly tone.

• Try to view things from the customer's perspective

• If a customer has experienced a major inconvenience due to a company-related issue, try to empathize with their point of view while writing your response letter.

Respond as promptly as possible

• Customers are more likely to respond well to a complaint response if they receive answers quickly.

• Responding quickly to an issue shows the customer that the company values their time.

• Sample phrases or sentences that can be used while drafting responses to complaints:

Salutation templates

• Dear Customer

• Hello

• Hi

• Dear Mr. Akash

• Content templates

• I'm sorry that you are not satisfied with the product that we have sent. Our mission is to provide items that make your life easier, not harder!

• I will pass along your feedback to our team. I hope you'll consider giving us another chance.

• I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience these issues may have caused you.

• I'm so sorry. May I know what exactly has happened so that I can help?

• I have taken the liberty of refunding your subscription fee for this month. You will continue to have full access to all features of our software.

• It appears that the [issue] you experienced was caused by poor connectivity. Our team has identified the source of the issue and is working actively to rightly fix the issue.

• According to our estimation, the team will fully resolve it within a week.

• Thank you for reaching out. I'm sorry this happened, and I understand your concern.

• I'm escalating your issue so that someone can take a closer look at what's going on Toled right away.

• Please standby, and one of my teammates will get back to you with more details ASAP.

• As requested by you, we have processed your refund, and it should reflect in your bank account in the following one or two business days.

• I'm sorry again for your experience with us.

• I can understand how frustrating it must have been.

• After looking into the issue, I'm pleased to be able to offer you the following options....

• I hope one of these solutions will help make up for the challenges you've experienced.

• We need to access your screen and co-browse together to address your issue. May we proceed with that?

• Can we start a co-browsing session to assist you in the form fill-up process?

• We may need to identify the problem you are facing. Can we start a video chat.

• Based on the information you have provided, we are facing trouble in diagnosing the issue. Is it ok with you to have a video chat to figure out the reason for the problem?

• We're sorry about the whole issue. Let me have a word with my manager to find out how we can fix this for you.

• We apologize for the inconvenience you have faced. We're very sorry. We will take care of [issue] on top priority for you. Please be patient with us.

• I'm sorry you are having this problem. Let's see if there is anything we can do to help 

• I'm sorry you are not happy with our product/with your purchase. Let's see what we can do to make things right.

• I'm sorry this has happened. I understand your frustration, and I will do my best to help you.

• We need just a bit more information before getting this resolved. Do you mind sending along [additional information]?

• Happy to help with this! I only need a bit more information from you. Please enter [additional information] into your account settings at [link].

• Happy to help out with this. Do you mind sending me the account number.

• We need some additional information before proceeding. Please share [required information].

• I'm so sorry about that. If you send a photo of the damaged product, we'll go ahead mes and send out another in good condition. Of course, if you'd like a refund, we can go ahead.

• I know this is less than ideal. But I'm going to have to talk to my manager and see what we can come up with to resolve your issue.

• Is it ok if I call you back once we have a resolution? I promise the remedial action won't take longer than 24 hours.

• I completely understand your frustration. I'd feel the same way. Can I please have your order number to resolve this issue?

• I'm sorry that you weren't happy with your purchase. Let's see what we can do to set things right.

Complimentary close templates

• Thank you for your business.

• We would be happy if you continue to be our customer.

• You are the valued customer and you are important for us.

• Sincerely,

• Warmly,

• All the Best,

• We hope to work together in the future.

• Please do stay connected. Have a great day.

• Thanks,

• Sincere thanks.

• Please don't hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.

• Thank you for taking the time to provide us with valuable feedback.

• Sincerely,