Common Customer Complaints: 8 Examples and Solutions

Businesses emphasize retaining their current customers because as per research, customer acquisition is anywhere between 5-25 times more expensive than customer retention. We discovered that this was an isolated incident, and it has since been resolved. I can assure you that this won’t happen again and we have put strict measures in place to prevent it in the future. For example, if one customer complains her shipment was damaged, this doesn’t mean you need to overhaul your entire supply chain. However, you should take note of how you handled the situation and keep it as a reference in case a similar situation comes up again. After some time has passed, you should follow up with the customer to see if they’re satisfied with the resolution.

In the meantime, I‘ve shared your feedback with our team and we’re [method to ensure the root cause of the complaint is addressed]. At HubSpot, Fontanella’s team would store all of this information digitally via its help desk. This provided an overview of how the support team was doing and made it easier to identify trends in customer feedback. If you‘re in a situation where you need more time to offer a solution, be sure to provide your contact information and give the customer a timeline for when you’ll follow up with them. The product team is making it their new priority to ensure this problem does not happen again. We were able to identify the reason for the issue quite quickly and will be working to safeguard it from a similar outage in the future so you can feel confident using our software moving forward.

Now, the customers don’t need to be subjected to long waiting times and don’t need to deal with a message that says, ‘Please hold. Analytics is used to categorize, track, and handle customer complaints and uncover insights. If your sales team makes a huge blunder, don‘t let the customer know that. Plus, it doesn’t build trust with the customer or your sales team to throw them under the bus. It would be naive to pretend every customer complaint is a valid one.

It lets them know that their concerns are at the top of your mind, and it’s another way to show that you care. Without their approval, your business would never grow, which is why customer service is so crucially important. It transforms generic communication into a tailored experience by addressing the customer by name, acknowledging their unique needs, preferences, and history with your company.

If handled correctly, a complaint can strengthen your relationship with the customer and improve your operations. You have great taste 🙂 Unfortunately, at the moment that item is out of stock. We don’t have a specific timeline on when that item will be back, but we are collecting a waitlist and I’m happy to add you to it and you’ll be notified when it’s available. It’s a total bummer when you’re excited about a product only to find out that it’s out of stock.

If the issue has been or can be repeated, make the necessary changes so you do not receive another complaint. Reflective listening involves being present, repeating the customer complaint to confirm understanding, and asking the right follow-up questions for further context. Doing so can help support agents understand customer complaints fully and address them comprehensively.

A study by Ascent Group found that 60% of companies that measured FCR for a year or longer reported improvements of up to 30% in their performance. Word-of-mouth marketing can prove to be a lot more useful than traditional marketing. According to a report by the marketing agency IMPACT, 75% of people don’t believe advertisements, but 92% believe brand recommendations from friends and family. I am looking for a conversational AI engagement solution for the web and other channels.

Our technical team is aware of the issue and working to resolve it as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and we hope to continue serving you better in the future. We are sorry to hear that you have been experiencing [insert issue here] with our product/service, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. We are sorry to hear that your recent purchase of [Product name] arrived damaged, and we apologize for the inconvenience caused. We take quality issues very seriously and appreciate you bringing them to our attention. If there’s anything we can do to change your mind, please let us know.

Remember to assume positive intent during encounters like these, in my experience a bit of calmness and understanding goes a long way when resolving customer complaints. Customer complaints come through different mediums like Google Reviews, phone calls, or even a handwritten letter. Each channel will offer different levels of frustration and require unique solutions to resolve the issue. That said, a good starting point is creating a roadmap for responding to these complaints. Use our Product Satisfaction Survey Template to gauge product satisfaction and create better customer experiences. To make sure you are fully meeting your customers’ needs, consider assigning reps to specific customers so they can develop a deeper understanding of individual customers’ needs..

They just had a conversation with your bot, now don’t force them to have the same one with your agent once again. Firstly, they have no interest in switching channels; it’s way too much effort. Secondly, calling someone up can feel intimidating, not to mention the fact that the hold time will wear their patience thin. If your business receives feedback often, make sure you have a documented brand voice and response strategy in place. Thanks for taking the time to share about your experience at [Company]. I understand that [Rephrase issue] and I apologize that you were not served according to our high standards.

What are the different types of Customer Complaints?

For these types of requests, it’s best to give any information that you can. If it’s something that won’t be back, it’s good to share that information. If you promise something will be back and it doesn’t happen, you’ll only compound the issue.

When an individual reaches out to your business, they may already be upset or concerned. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72 percent of consumers want immediate service. With this in mind, having customers wait for an extended period for assistance can make them even more agitated.

Free Review Response Templates

But the type of help being offered, when, how, and to whom, can be what sets a support team apart. For Trust & Will, a company that helps families create customized wills and estate plans, customer support is a key driver of business and product decisions. Also, give customers a way to connect with a rep in the right department if they can’t find the answers they need on their own. Of course, you’ll also want to keep an eye on your staffing ratios compared to your customer base. If your audience is growing quickly, you’ll likely need to increase your customer support team in turn, but using self-service can help to reduce ticket volume even as your audience grows.

After you’ve said you’re sorry, showed your appreciation and overall gave them the support they were hopefully looking for, consider how else you can help support customers who complain. One way to do this is to have upper management follow up with these customers 24 to 48 hours after they have expressed their complaint. This is simply another way to show them you care, as well as it suggests you still have their complaint and concerns top of mind.

Following up with customer complaints will help you stand out from the competition by demonstrating excellent customer service. Perhaps the most important part of handling customer complaints is finding a resolution–and quickly. As the ones purchasing your products or services, they collectively have a direct impact on whether your business grows or fails. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. This is especially true if your business operates in a highly competitive industry.

How to analyze Customer Complaints?

Unfortunately, your customers may experience similar challenges when trying to reach you. Let’s wrap up with some general tips that we gathered on responding to customer complaints. If you’ve followed the steps up until now, the complaint should be sufficiently addressed and your customer should feel like the issue has been fully resolved. This explanation outlines the improvement to the service and compensates the customer for his potentially lost revenue. This response thanks the customer for sharing feedback, apologizes for the issue, explains what led to the situation, and shows an understanding of how the issue affected the customer. Mike now knows that his account rep fully understands the reason for the complaint and values his business and feedback.

If you have a moment, we’d love to hear your thoughts on your experience. I will ensure that you have a positive experience with [Company name], and I am here to assist you in any way I can. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The following email templates cover every customer service category and situation you might encounter when emailing customers. We’ve categorized these email templates and included a jump-to section below for easy access. We also included a subject line for each scenario to make things easier.

We will initiate the refund/return process as quickly as possible and will keep you informed of the progress. We may need further information from you, such as your reason for return, to help improve our products and services. If you have any questions or concerns in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Your customers are interacting with your business pretty much every day. It is clear that at some stage, your team will encounter roadblocks and challenges. But the one thing that the majority of customers will remember in all likelihood is the direct interaction they had with customer queries your business. It only takes one bad experience for the customer to swear off your business forever. Suppose you’ve promised your customer something and never get around to it. Sometimes all it takes is one ignored message or email and you suddenly have an angry customer.

If it’s a policy issue, you could do your best to offer some more insight into why a certain policy is in place. Most people reaching out with a time-based complaint are looking to be heard as well as reassured. Offering concrete timelines and steps can help on the reassurance front. Owning delays can also go a long way in letting the customer know you hear and empathize with them. Whatever the complaints are, you’ll need to examine the feedback you’re getting first. If your team is having trouble keeping track of follow up, you should consider adopting a ticketing system.

What is the most common customer complaint?

Customer complaints refer to when a business does not deliver on its commitment and does not meet customer expectations in terms of the product or services. And the best way to obtain new clients and maintain the existing ones is by providing them with satisfactory service. Constructive complaints often highlight specific issues with products, services, or customer interactions that can be traced, measured, and improved upon. When a customer complains, determining the appropriate response can be harder than it sounds. Nevertheless, it’s important to train your customer service team so that they can handle common customer complaints and make sure issues are resolved quickly and effectively. For businesses of all sizes, there are different methods and tools to record customer complaints.

While the lines between “customer service” and “customer support” may have become blurred, it is important to use both to deliver high-quality customer experiences. Customers expect quick, easy, and effective support, and they’re willing to look elsewhere if they don’t get it. And whether a company exceeds or falls short of customer expectations is often directly tied to business success.

If there is anything else we can assist with, please do not hesitate to reach out. Can you please provide us with more details about the circumstances surrounding your request for a refund? This information will help us to understand your situation and make an informed decision. We understand that your time is valuable, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We are excited to offer you an exclusive time-sensitive deal on our [Product name]. This is a limited-time offer that is only available to our valued customers, so don’t miss out on this amazing deal.

You reach out to them manually, before taking payment (as required by the GDPR) and they are happy to continue with their subscription. When your customer has a legitimate complaint, you need to find the root cause and solve it. It’s the only way an organization can understand exactly what’s wrong (and how to fix it). When you receive a complaint, notify your manager to discuss what happens next. By answering these questions, you can take the necessary steps required to prevent them from happening again. If your product is great enough, there’s a good chance you’ll hear polarized opinions about it.

If you and your teams are strapped for time, make a standing monthly or quarterly meeting to mine through and see what issues spark ideas for improving things. Encourage cross-departmental collaboration and use your internal chat to grab a quick, personalized message from your product head – the customer will know they’ve been heard where it matters most. Plus, you’ll already have it the next time around, so you can have an awesome ready-made reply and satisfy the customer’s need for speed.

Keeping customers happy is one of the most important goals of a business. But to achieve that, you need a good customer service team and a suitable support suite. Customer Effort Score is a metric used to measure the effort put in by a customer to use your product or service. It also takes into account the effort required for a customer to resolve a product or service related issue. A lower CES score corresponds to higher customer satisfaction, and subsequently, better customer loyalty.

• Give your customer service team the authority to handle the majority of customer complaints to avoid passing your customer onto a series of people and managers.
• Now, the customers don’t need to be subjected to long waiting times and don’t need to deal with a message that says, ‘Please hold.
• Also, wait times for chat support can vary, with averages ranging from nearly instant responses to about a minute and a half.
• Plus, you’ll already have it the next time around, so you can have an awesome ready-made reply and satisfy the customer’s need for speed.

Thank you for taking the time to share that with me so I can make it right. [Rephrase issue] is something that our team at [Company] doesn’t take lightly. I’m so sorry about the issue with the payment system — once we noticed the issue, we put our team on it and it was resolved within minutes. Your customer will appreciate that you acknowledged their complaint even if you don’t have a solution yet.

By offering a virtual line customers can check into remotely and monitor wait times; there is no longer a need for large physical lines. Bi-directional communication features allow staff and customers to remain connected throughout. Appointment scheduling features can help businesses offer seamless curbside and in-store pickup, and business intelligence helps companies with everything from staff efficiency to the in-store experience. One of the options for businesses to fix this issue is improved training. Knowledgeable and communicative staff are integral to the future of retail businesses. They are an important part of offering personalized services and are the frontline of a business’ customer service offerings.

This could include broken links, confusing layouts, or slow loading times. These issues can deter customers from using your digital platforms and potentially lead to lost sales and poor SEO metrics. For Kale, customer support is all about building trust — which ultimately impacts everything from customer loyalty and retention, to brand and marketing.

If you’ve gotten one complaint from one customer about one specific issue over the last 10 years, that issue might not be worth addressing. But if you’re getting multiple messages from multiple customers who all shared the same complaint, that’s the beginning of a narrative. A customer leaving a feature request won’t mind at all if it takes you a day to respond, but customers who are in a “pulling my hair out” situation want a resolution yesterday.

Customer complaints provide a unique opportunity for your customer service team to engage with your customers on a more personal level. Addressing their concerns not only solves their immediate issues; it also establishes a deeper, more personal connection with your brand. AI-powered tools, such as a chatbot, can help support agents deliver faster responses.

It was great to have the opportunity to showcase our product and how it can benefit you. Thank you for visiting our website and expressing interest in our product! We are glad to hear that you are interested in learning more about our solution and how it can help you achieve your goals. I wanted to reach out and confirm that we have received your recent discount request. We’re sorry to hear that you weren’t satisfied with your recent purchase, and we are doing our best to fix that.

Your customer complaints could be a goldmine for finding exactly how your company can improve. Complaint analysis is used to track, categorize and handle customer complaints. Not only can showing empathy help you identify a solution to a problem, but it can also make the job of your customer service reps easier. Using empathy statements and attempting to relate to the customer often helps in calming everyone down. As your business grows, you’re bound to deal with customer complaints at some point or another. Being able to assess and address customer complaints efficiently is key to making this happen.