Resolving grievances: Enhancing customer and employee satisfaction
In today’s world keeping clients and employees happy and content is more important than ever in today’s world. We are spoilt for choice for absolutely everything and the stakes have never been this high. So for businesses, it is essential that they make sure they don’t leave any stone unturned in keeping their clients and employees more than satisfied. While some people are naturally better at this, it is definitely something that can be worked on.
There are a host of benefits when it comes to keeping customers happy and it makes so much more sense to continue doing the same if we look at the figures. It is said that while an unhappy client will share their grievances with more than 20 people and a happy consumer will speak about the experience to 3 or 4. Amazing, isn’t it? And it doesn’t stop here. It costs more than 5 times to try and get a new consumer for your product than to retain a current one. Also, you can always cross-sell to an existing customer which will make the process easier as he/she has already bought into the philosophy of the company and the product offered. You would want to have a good net promoter score (a metric that measures the willingness of the customer to recommend the products and services to others.) And indeed the data backs this up, as promoters are 4.2 times more likely to buy again, 5.6 times more likely to forgive a mistake by a company and also 7.2 times more likely to try a new product or service from the detractors. Net Promoter Score also examines the likelihood of word of mouth marketing as found by Nielsen that 83% would trust the recommendations of people they know like their colleagues, friends and family.
So let’s look at some of the ways in which we can ensure maximum satisfaction and step up our efforts to bring about an effective plan into fruition helping us achieve the same:
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- Under Promise, Over Deliver: You can’t go any wrong with this saying and I am sure this is not the first time you are reading about this, but us humans are a distracted bunch. We grossly overestimate ourselves when it comes to getting work done. When speaking to a client, if you know some work can be done in a day, tell them that it’ll take anywhere from 4 days to a week, so when you do get to finish the same work in a day, it is a hail mary.
- Working along with expectations: This has to do a lot with #1 but more importantly the process involved. Managing expectations is done best when you have a process in place and can explain the same to your client since the very start. You don’t want your team to get calls every day of the week and having to go through the same thing every day. So making clear how the process will be in case the calls are weekly or fortnightly goes a long way.
- Having a robust system in place: Your business should comprise of a robust system that effectively tracks down incidents as soon as they arise, you can start off with something as simplistic as having a WhatsApp group in place so that any issue that the client is facing can be addressed right there and then if it is something more confidential, you can have use google forms to reach to the bottom of a situation while also maintaining the confidentiality and once you know the details about the issues you can raise to a committee of individuals elected to sort the same.
- Creating a panel: Creating a committee or a panel of people that specifically address the issues and grievances of the clients and come up with credible solutions, having a timeframe in place to ensure the issues are resolved as quickly and accurately as they can go along in leaving a great impression on the clients as they get the feeling that you genuinely care and understand the issues they go through and are doing your best to help them get an optimum solution for the same.
- Ensuring Timely Closure: Once an issue has been raised your team must collectively work on getting it resolved as soon as possible so as to make sure it doesn’t end up escalating and causing more problems to the client as well as to better prepare them for something similar happening again. Based on the intensity of the issue, they can be segregated and worked on accordingly. This segregation also helps to bring about the right amount of effort and time you need to provide in order to solve the issue at hand.
- Tracking and taking action: You process should be capable of tracking the issues as soon as they occur, so by creating a mechanism that can actively trace the origin of the issue, a timestamp as to when you can ideally address it and then working along the same is very ideal to get the best results. Not only does this make your life easier but it will also provide inputs on the work you have been doing and make the entire process concise.
More than a third of companies don’t actively look to maintain client relations properly and spend a lot less than the optimum amount of time trying to do the same. Hence, if your business can actively look to only provide support and reliance to the clients and employees but also have their best interests in place by helping resolve their grievances, providing solutions to their problems and helping them ease their troubles it more than half the battle won.
