Complaints are a gift… if they are properly unwrapped. This session will help your people to see complaints through a new lens, turning what can be a heart sinking moment into a positive experience for your customers and themselves. When people hear the words ‘I want to complain’ they can become defensive and this can make the situation worse for the customer and break their trust in your organisation. But what if your people welcomed complaints and saw them as an opportunity to deliver a GREAT experience and strengthen their customer’s loyalty to your organisation?
- Recognise the personality styles and how they show up under pressure, adapt their own style to give the customer what they need from the interaction
- Ask questions to uncover the cause of the complaint and the impact the situation is having on the customer
- Give a sincere and genuine apology and pitch the resolution with accountability
Session outline
This is the overview for the half-day, face-to-face session. Timings are approximate and will flex depending on the needs of the group. Virtual delivery follows the same content and sequence but with different timings and excludes the additional practise section.
1. Welcome to GREAT complaints (40 mins)
- What will you learn? Session overview and objectives
- Activity: Complaints are an opportunity?
- Why a complaint might be described as a ‘gift’
2. Three strategies (90 mins)
- Adapt and attune:
- How the Personality Styles might behave when making a complaint
- Activity: Adapt and attune – adapting to the Personality Styles when a customer complains
- Understand the customer’s story:
- How it feels to be ‘processed’
- Applying the GREAT skill, Recognise Needs, in a complaint situation
- Activity: Understand the customer’s story – Part 1 – Drawing from your own experiences
- Activity: Understand the customer’s story – Part 2 – Apply the strategy to your most common customer complaint scenarios
- Respond and resolve:
- Apology or financial compensation?
- The three core elements to a genuine apology
- Activity: Respond and resolve – Crafting a genuine apology in your most common customer complaint scenarios
BREAK (15 mins)
3. Practise (F2F only – 60 minutes)
- Activity: Practise GREAT resolving customer complaints – apply what you’ve learned to real customer complaint situations
4. Action plan and close (15 mins)
- Reflect and prepare actions
- Activity: surprise!
- Close
