6 Tips for Handling Pest Control Customer Complaints
Pests can be clever and unpredictable, which means they can return despite your best efforts. Pest control companies receive complaints about returned pests, as well as complaints about miscommunications and errors. It’s a given that you’ll get complaints, but how you handle them will define your company and your success. Here are our six best tips for handling pest control customer complaints.
1. Listen to The Full Complaint
It may be tempting to cut some customers off half-way through the complaint. You’re the expert, so you feel like you know where they’re going with their complaint. You’re probably right, but being cut off will only increase the customer’s frustration. They need to feel heard, so make sure you hear them.
2. Keep Your Emotions in Check
Particularly when customers are making unfair complaints, it can be hard to keep your emotions in check. No one likes to be blamed for things that are not their fault. But, remember that giving your customers the right expectations and explaining your role is your job. And, keeping your cool is the best way to help your customer understand your perspective.
3. Tell Them You Care
You take it as a given that you care about your customers and want them to have the best experience possible. Reminding your customer of your commitment, or just expressing empathy, can go a long way to reassuring them. It also proves that you understand their problem and the kind of frustration it can cause. If you’re not great at expressing emotion, you could consider relying on your receptionist to communicate your feelings.
4. Respond with Real Knowledge
Sometimes customers are more bothered by their lack of knowledge than the problem itself. Why didn’t the trap work? Why did the mice return? Implicitly beneath these questions, they may be wondering if your company has taken advantage of them. The best thing you can do in this case is to explain what went wrong in as much detail as you can. This helps reassure people that you really do know what you’re doing.
A knowledgeable receptionist is a huge help with this. If a receptionist can preemptively explain a problem, a customer will be put at ease. If instead, your receptionist expresses that they don’t know, or the problem sounds unusual, the customer may be even more upset.
5. Focus on What You Can Do
Customers will want to focus on the problem, but you should try to focus on what you can do about the problem. That way, you spend less time rehashing the mistakes you may have made and more time proving that you’ll make it up to the customer. Offer a solution early in the conversation and compromise with the customer where you can make the solution more appealing to them.
6. Follow-Up
The best way to make up for a negative interaction with a customer is to have a positive interaction with them. Therefore, it’s very important that you follow-up with them to make sure the problem is resolved (even when you know it is). Have your receptionist call up the customer to get their final feedback or remind you to do it yourself. Tired of dealing with customer complaints directly? Front Office Solutions offers pest control answering services and virtual receptionists especially trained to handle calls for pest control services.
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