Customer Care & Complaint Management

This self-paced course will help you explore the importance of good customer care. You will learn how to satisfy your customers and how to manage customer complaints. 

Who is this course for? 

The course is intended for anyone working with customers and anyone interested in the topic.

What will you learn? 

• You will learn how to demonstrate excellent customer complaint management skills
• You will learn how to devise a range of sales opportunities relevant to the care and satisfaction of customers
• You will learn how to evaluate customer satisfaction and create quality-enhancing measures in your business
• You will learn how to improve your business’ long-term customer engagement capacity and increase your customers’ lifetime value

Keywords: Sustainability, tourism, management, customer care, customer management

For customers to be satisfied and come back or recommend the tourism business to others, good customer care is a basic prerequisite. Of course, this also includes complaint management. What is important about customer care and how you manage to satisfy your customers is the topic of this course.  

This module will enable you to:

• Demonstrate excellent customer complaint management skills.
• Devise a range of sales opportunities relevant to the care and satisfaction of customers.
• Evaluate customer satisfaction and create quality-enhancing measures in your business.
• Improve your business’ long-term customer engagement capacity and increase your customers’ lifetime value.

Professional Complaint Management

Lesson 1: The 3CRC tactic

It’s a fact of life — things go wrong.

And why wouldn’t that be any different in tourism and hospitality businesses? Especially, given the fact that we deal with lots of human beings in this industry and they are known to get things wrong from time to time. 

Interestingly enough, though, many customers know this and don’t mind at all, if you address the issue correctly and set things right straight away. 

Complaint management with the ‘3CRC tactic’

Let’s look at how this can be done in a professional way with the ‘3CRC tactic’. With the five steps of this tactic, customer complaint management is made much easier.

The five steps of the 3CRC tactic are:   

• Consider
• Clarify
• Confirm
• Respond
• Confirm

Successful complaint management is the cornerstone of excellent customer service. The 3CRC tactic is an easy way to remember the essential steps to dealing with customer complaints. 

Description

Complaint management is not difficult at all if you follow the five steps of the 3CRC tactics. Consider, clarify, confirm, respond, confirm. Let’s start right away with the first step and the first C, Consider. Consider what has been said. Actively listening to the customer and not interrupting is not only polite but also expected. You can write down the most important points so that you don’t forget anything important later. 

On to the next step and the next C, clarify. Clarify with questions to get more specific information. Make sure to get a clear understanding of what exactly it is that your client is complaining about. It is not uncommon for customers to complain about all sorts of things, but actually it might have been a lukewarm coffee served at breakfast that they really resented. When it is clear what the problem is, the next step is the third C, confirm.

Confirm your understanding of the problem or problems. Summarise in your own words what you understand the problem to be and ask whether that is correct. Perhaps you got it wrong, or there might be a detail that you didn’t think was important. 

Continue to the next step and to the R, respond. You can immediately offer a solution, for example a change to a different room. In more complicated cases you might want to talk to your supervisor first. And tell the client that you will get back to them. You should then do this by all means. In general it doesn’t hurt if the response also includes an apology. 

Now follows the fifth and last step, again with the C, confirm. Confirm that the customer agrees with your response. If the customer is then satisfied, the 3CRC tactic has been successful. Successful complaint management is the cornerstone of excellent customer service.

What is the correct sequence of dealing with a complaint?

1. Respond with a solution
2. Consider your client’s answer
3. Confirm that s/he is fine with this
4. Clarify to get more info
5. Confirm again

1. Clarify to get more info on the issue
2. Confirm that you understood the issue
3. Consider how your client answers
4. Respond with a solution
5. Confirm that s/he is fine with this

1. Consider what’s been said
2. Clarify any questions you have
3. Confirm your understanding of the issue
4. Respond with a suitable solution or next steps
5. Confirm that the client agrees with your proposal

Research has shown that about 60% of those people complaining to a company will stay a customer if their problem is resolved at some stage. However, 95% will stay if the problem is resolved quickly.

Lesson 2: Acknowledge it and plan for it

If you are approached by an upset or angry customer in a restaurant, at reception or some other public space, there is a high chance of other customers being around. So try to move the conversation to a more secluded place away from other customers. It is not pleasant for other customers to witness an emotionally stressful complaint situation. Sometimes this can spark a whole wave of complaints from other customers. 

Complaint handling policy

First things first: you have to have a complaint handling policy in place. This should be a formal document, which describes:

Steps

The steps you will take in discussing, addressing and resolving customer complaints in your business.

Formal complaint

How customers can make a formal complaint (e.g. via your website and/or at the reception).

Solutions

Some of the solutions you offer to resolve complaints.

Budget

A budget for trained employees that they can use to instantly resolve complaints.

Training schedule

A training schedule and training frequency for complaint handling training for all employees, especially for new ones.

This policy needs to be thoroughly inclusive, meaning that all employees at all levels of your organisation need to know about it. They need to understand how to apply its content in practice and know who to approach within their department when faced with complaints they feel uneasy about.

Complaints are frequently regarded as a nuisance — something you have to put up with, but instead they should be considered as important feedback. 

Welcome criticism

What makes you grow and become better? Failure. Same for you, same for me —same for everyone. Welcome criticism. Encourage your customers to share their honest opinion. Reward them for doing so. Go above and beyond to thank them for letting you know how to better serve them. Do so and your customers will love you for this, become loyal and be even more forgiving if things go wrong. 

Test your knowledge

Now let’s look at how to actually handle a customer complaint.

Imagine a hotel guest complaining to a receptionist that she was put in the wrong room, which doesn’t have a balcony and the room next door is far too noisy.

What is the most important thing the receptionist needs to do immediately?

• Being friendly
• Apologizing
• Providing a solution to the problem
• Promise this will never happen again
• Listen actively

Lesson 3: Consider & Clarify = Active Listening

Hearing is very different from listening. Hearing happens anyway — listening implies that you are actually interested in the person you are talking to. Active listening means that you are trying your very best to be an excellent listener — someone people want to talk to because they feel that you are interested in what they have to say.  Active listening at work is particularly important if you are in a supervisory position, interact with colleagues and/or work directly with customers. Active listening allows you to understand problems and collaborate to find solutions. It also reflects your patience, a valuable skill in any workplace. 

How to be a good active listener

• Always be attentive and avoid any kind of distraction. Show that you are really focused on the person you are talking to. Turn towards him or her, make eye contact and nod from time to time.
• Don’t be judgemental, even if someone tells you things that you find odd or don’t agree with. You never know, perhaps there is a good reason for what happened. It is crucial to make the guest feel that s/he is taken seriously.
• Always let people tell their story. Be patient, never interrupt or finish sentences for someone. 
• Ask clarifying questions during the conversation and try to summarise what’s been said in your own words. This way, you respond to the person, showing that you’ve actually understood what you were told.

Actively listening to someone complaining is a good start. But, at some stage, you have to respond by offering a solution and apologizing, if necessary. The solutions can be as varied as the issues — moving someone to a different room, replacing a dish that was served too cold or whatever else. You can’t make any hard and fast rules about solving a problem. 

Lesson 4: Apologizing to customers

Is there such a thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ apology? Do you actually need to apologise?

As always — it depends.

Mistake was made:

When it is blatantly obvious that you or your staff is at fault, then you should apologise sincerely.

But, don’t over-do it. A short statement like, “I am very sorry this happened” is usually sufficient. 

The more you apologise, the more customers will feel they can ask for anything. It is far more important that you get on with solving the problem straight away.

Mistake was not made:

If you realise that it is not actually your mistake or any of your team members’ mistakes, then don’t apologise. 

Yes, this tends to feel a bit weird, but you’ll get used to it. 

You can still be empathic and offer to solve the problem, but don’t let customers feel that they can just complain about anything. Some guests like to take advantage of this

As part of your apology, you might want to offer something to your customer as a sign of goodwill and respect. This could be: 

• A small discount on the bill
• A dessert or a drink on the house
• A discount on your customer’s next booking
• A freebie, like a t-shirt with your company’s logo
• The offer to receive a higher-valued service (e.g., a better hotel room) for the same price as the lower-valued service (i.e. a standard hotel room)

When considering what you could give to your customer as an apology, it’s good to think soft dollar — meaning:

Things that have a greater value to your customers than the actual cost to you.

Any idea what those could be? Check out the following list and decide whether it’s a soft dollar or a hard dollar apology.

There are two advantages to using soft dollar apologies:

• They are usually not very expensive to the organization.
• It’s an opportunity for guests to try some of your services. Once someone has stayed in a luxury room, they might develop a taste for it.

 

Maintaining a High Quality Customer Experience

Lesson 1: Understanding customer satisfaction

From your perspective, what’s better for a business?

Option 1

If things go wrong, you have a good way to respond immediately and resolve the issue.

Option 2

To continuously make sure that your services run smoothly, by observing carefully what has gone wrong in the past and make sure you improve in the future.

Both concepts are essential but option 2 is crucial.

You should not make the same mistakes all the time and then spend time, energy and effort resolving them. That would be a never-ending story. At some stage, you have to learn from your mistakes.

Look after your guests

That’s the foundation of hospitality.  It’s a deeply ingrained principle that guests are to be treated like queens and kings. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but it’s pretty much how we understand being hospitable.

In the hospitality industry, that’s also the way to make money. Therefore, looking after guests could also be thought of as:

• Understanding what your guests desire, appreciate and/or enjoy.
• Making sure they have convenient access to it.
• Selling it to them, as soon as they wish to have it. 

From customer satisfaction to customer delight

Customer Satisfaction:

Imagine customer satisfaction as an equation of the customer’s expectations and the perceived quality and value he/she gets from your services for a certain price. 

In hospitality, you can satisfy your customers by serving them exactly what they like in exactly the quality they like for a certain price. A job well done.

Customer Delight:

There is an even better option: surprise them. Show them what else you have to offer. For example, tell them how amazing a rare bottle of wine tastes. Tease them.

You might make their evening unforgettable, not only by creating customer satisfaction, but also customer delight.

Lesson 2: Anticipating your customer’s needs

Anticipate what your customers will want and surprise them by having it ready when they arrive. 

That not only creates customer satisfaction but customer delight. A strong emotion that will make them talk about you and become a loyal customer.

Here are a few ideas on how it can be done:

Look at your customers

An elderly couple will behave very differently to a young businesswoman. A young couple on a honeymoon will have totally different needs than a family with three young kids. Looking is a good way to predict basic needs.

Keep track

Good service businesses create customer profiles, where they log what the customer has ordered/consumed. Then, the next time the customer arrives, you can anticipate what they might enjoy.

Long-time employees

The longer your employees are there, the more they will remember about regular guests.

Listen carefully

That is a golden rule. Customers tend to drop hints — oftentimes without even realising. Actively listen to your customers and you will learn a lot about their needs and wishes.

Encourage your team

These four tactics become even more powerful if you encourage a customer service mindset among your team, look after internal communication across all departments and encourage your team by regularly sharing the best customer delight stories.

Now it is time for a little practice: Imagine the following scenarios. What customer needs or wishes are present and how would you now delight your customer?

In a Restaurant:

A regular guest tells you: “This wine is great. But last year, I had the oaky, rich red wine in Stellenbosch… Man! That was amazing!” 

Identify need/wish:

Have a rich, oaky red wine from the Stellenbosch region.

Devise strategy to delight:

See if you have a wine like this on the menu and offer it to the guest. If not, order one in, have it ready, perhaps check which main course would go well with it, inform your entire team and next time this customer comes by for dinner, surprise him.

In a Hotel:

You work as a reservation agent in a hotel and a gentleman says: “I’d like to book a room for me and my wife next month. We’d like to celebrate our anniversary.” 

Identify need/wish:

Surprise my wife with a really nice room and treat her to something special.

Devise strategy to delight:

First, offer the best rooms you have and check whether they like to book the best table for two in a quiet romantic corner of your restaurant. When the couple checks into their room, they will find a congratulatory message from your manager and a bouquet of flowers.

Lesson 3: Managing service quality

Welcome to quality management

One of the most difficult things in running a service operation is to always offer the same quality to every customer. Therefore, it is important to constantly be on the lookout in service businesses for what can go wrong and address problems. 

You can use the so-called DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control) cycle for improvement to do that. 

1. Define

Define as precisely as possible the quality of the services you offer to your guests. 

This is difficult — how does one define quality in terms of service?

Here are a couple of ideas:

Time

The time a guest has to wait for check in at reception or between ordering and receiving a dish in the restaurant.

Cleanliness

The cleanliness of the restaurant, bar, tour bus, hotel room, etc.

Number of pillows

The number of pillows on a bed or towels in a bathroom.

Greeting

The way customers are greeted upon arrival at the hotel.

Type of music

The type of music played in the bar or restaurant and the volume it is played at.

Temperature of beverages

The ideal temperature coffee, wine or beer should be when it is served.

So, there are a few things that you can define. And that’s exactly what you have to do for each and every service you offer. Being able to measure them or, if that’s not possible, at least to be able to check on them, is absolutely crucial.

2. Measure

Measure how well you perform against your standards.

Big hotel chains pay so-called mystery guests to come and stay at their hotels once a month and use all services. While doing so, they keep track of how well the hotel performs against its own standards.

You might not want to go that far, but you can certainly create a checklist and check with your employees as to how well they managedto adhere to those standards. 

Another point of reference might be guest feedback. 

3. Analyse

Analyse what caused the problem. 

Talk to customers who have complained, talk to your employees who were present, check the equipment used, talk to your boss and raise awareness among everyone involved.

4. Improve

Solutions to improve your services will be as diverse as the amount of things that can go wrong. What’s important, however, is that everyone involved understands what needs to change in order for this issue to never occur again.

5. Control

Control and ensure that the improvement has actually brought good results. Telling staff to not let customers wait for more than five minutes for check-in is great. But will he/she actually change? You have got to control the process — as often as you can

 

Customer-Focused Selling

Lesson 1: Up-selling — from satisfaction to delight

Description

Imagine you have a beautiful hotel right on the beach. Your guests come to check in and have booked a standard room facing the backyard. As a manager you could just check your guests in, or you could offer them an upgrade to a seaview room at a really fantastic price. You make your guests aware that they might prefer to spend their holiday overlooking the sea, that they want more than what they originally ordered. This is the fine art of customer focused selling. They may not have thought about this, so you are doing them a favor and at the same time making a little more revenue. This special method of selling guests something more, something better, something bigger, is called upselling. 

Another option is to make them aware of something that would fit perfectly alongside what they have just ordered. We call this bolt on selling because it is like selling a bolt that perfectly fits the screw. Guests with the seaview room may wish to add a three course dinner menu in your restaurant. 

There is one more idea regarding customer focused selling, cross selling. No one business offers everything. From a customer perspective the whole holiday counts and not just the experience at your hotel or tourism business. What you need in this case is to cross sell. Offer your services plus those of other businesses in the area. The guests in the seaview room who enjoyed a three course meal in your restaurant the night before may now want to add a boat tour with lunch on the sea, but the boat tour is not offered by you, but by the neighbouring shop. Of course you have made a corresponding agreement with the boat tour shop next door. A win win situation for everyone. It pays to put effort into retaining your existing customers. In fact it pays a great deal.

In customer-focus selling, as the name suggests, the focus is on the customer.  It is helpful to tell your customers why it might be a good idea to go large. 

You could point out that the larger option is more value for money: “If both of you wish to drink more than one glass, you could share a bottle and it will be cheaper”.

Test your knowledge

How could these items be ‘up-sold’?  

A small portion of fries

A larger portion of fries

A small / single coffee

A large / double coffee

A glass of wine

A bottle of wine

A simple hotel room

The superior and more spacious room

A three-hour guided tour

A full-day guided tour

Try it the next time you get the opportunity. You will see how much satisfaction it gives you to help someone have a nice time while also generating more revenue for your business. 

Lesson 2: Bolt-on selling

The correct matching of bolt to bolt-on sell 

• A coffee or tea – a sweet pastry
• A main course with dark meat – a glass or bottle of red wine
• A guided tour – a pick-up service from the hotel or lodge
• A cocktail at the bar – a platter of snacks to share with your friends
• A scuba-diving trip to a reef – a book about the local marine life
• A four-course evening meal – a coffee or whisky to finish off the evening

Bolt-on selling this is really easy and you can practice this pretty much with anything you sell. 

Practice time

How would you use your bolt-on selling skills in a restaurant during dinner service?

Pause and think about it for a minute.

If you can, casually present the bolt to your guests before you even ask them.

Display

Take the freshly baked cake from your kitchen and casually walk through the coffee shop, as if carrying it to the cake display.

Offer

Go around and ask your customers if they would like a bit of cake with their coffee? See what happens.

Assemble

At the end of dinner in the restaurant, put together a tray of fine spirits like whiskies, cognacs or port wines and a few suitable glasses.

Suggest

Casually stroll through the restaurant and perhaps stop by a few tables to ask how they enjoyed their dinner. After making sure everything is alright, check whether the guests might like a drink to finish the evening.

Keep in mind — don’t be pushy. Just casually make guests aware of what you have to offer so they don’t miss out.

Lesson 3: Cross-selling for increased value

Best cross-selling options

• A lodge room – A guided tour of the next door national park
• A few days of scuba diving on the reef – A camping spot at the local beach camp
• A 5-star hotel room – A scenic flight around the coast with a small airplane
• A day-long rafting tour down the river – A hearty meal at the local BBQ restaurant or pub

Match suitable additional services that surrounding businesses can offer to increase the value of what you have to offer. 

In tourism, this could include a basic pair of ‘A room + an activity’. It is important that the proposed additional service matches your own services, including style and quality. Someone staying at a 5-star lodge will also like to have a 5-star boat tour experience, for example. 

But how does this help you to make money? 

Approach the businesses that you’d like to partner with and negotiate a price for selling their services. If you run a hotel, this could be:

• a fixed fee, e.g. $20 for every guided tour that you sell to your hotel guests.
• a percentage, e.g. 10% of whatever your guests book at the local tour guide company via your hotel. 

This way, you can offer great experiences plus make a little more revenue.

Lesson 4: Selling in style

Check out the following list of characteristics and decide whether they pertain to a good or a bad salesperson:

Sales rules

• Always make an effort to be genuinely friendly. Customers sense your true intent quickly.
• Be consistent in your sales efforts but don’t be pushy towards your customers. You can’t force someone to buy additional services.
• Try to sell a service or item only if you are convinced that this will be of value to your client. You would be surprised how much difference it makes if your client sees how convinced you are about the offer. 
• Point out the benefits of the extra service rather than the disadvantages of not having it. 
• Last, but not least, be prepared to step back from your sales efforts and let the customer know that this additional service might not be what they are looking for.

Long-Term Customer Relationship Building

Lesson 1: The benefits of loyal customers

It pays to put effort into retaining your existing customers. In fact, it pays a great deal.

It’s been proven time and time again that getting a customer to spend their first dollar on your services is far more expensive than making your customers return.

Why is it so important to create loyal customers that come back to your business time and again?

1. Because 20% of your customers generate 80% of your revenue.
2. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases your profits by 25% to 95%
3. Attracting new customers costs you five times as much as retaining existing ones.

Benefits of long-term customer relationships

Increased purchases

20% of your customers that are loyal and like your business spend far more on your services than anyone else.

Lower costs

On average, you spend ⅕ on making customers happy so that they come back — rather than convincing potentially new customers to visit your business.

Competitive advantage

Every customer that stays with you will obviously not support your competition. That gives you an advantage over the competition.

Word of mouth

Loyal customers will tell their friends and family all about you. That’s great advertising — and word of mouth is free.

Employee satisfaction

Would you rather work with clients that enjoy your services and that you know already — or with new customers that you may never see again?

So how can you turn a first-time customer to your hotel, restaurant or tour operator business into a long-term, loyal customer?

What are the key determinants of a successful long-term relationship with your loyal customers?

1. Great service quality
2. A feeling of trust
3. Commitment from your employees to customer satisfaction

Lesson 2: How to stay connected

‘Keeping up the connection’ is a golden rule of relationship building. 

It’s just like a friendship — you have got to stay in touch. While your customers are at your hotel or restaurant, it is easy to be in touch. But what happens once they pay the bill and leave?

How to stay connected

Booking info

When customers book your services (especially in hotels or tour providers), you receive their email address. You might want to consider sending them a personalised thank you for staying with you. 

If you get to know their birthdate, it is another great opportunity to get in touch — maybe even sending a little gift voucher. Or simply ask them to sign up to your regular newsletter if you have one.

Social media

Consider any social media sites that you and your customers use. For example, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Xing are great.

The golden rule is: you’ve got to stay active. You can’t just establish a social media presence and then not update, post and comment regularly.

Customer review websites

Some customers like to comment on their recent travel experiences.

Regardless of the content of their review, you can make a habit of responding. Say thanks for a great review, apologise for a bad experience and try to engage in complaint handling, as described in Topic One.

Regular mail

Older customers might not be very tech-savvy and may not have a social media account. Send them a nice letter by snail mail. 

There is no hard and fast rule about how often you should stay in touch and what channel you should use to stay connected. One thing is certain though — the pace on social media and customer review websites is very high — and so the expectation to respond quickly is also high.

Lesson 3: Give them an incentive to come back

Little presents keep a friendship alive is another golden rule of relationship building. 

If you go to the same shop over and over again, potentially spending quite a bit of money there, wouldn’t you like to feel appreciated? Of course, you would.

One way to make this happen is to establish a loyalty programme for your customers. The basic principle is: Buy 10, get one for free.

The more customers purchase, the more reward they should receive. Here are a couple of examples of how some hospitality and tourism companies have put this into action:

Loyalty Card: A loyalty card at a coffee shop, where you get a stamp for every coffee you purchase. Every 10th coffee is on the house and you get a new loyalty card afterwards. This could work just as well for a bar or restaurant

Loyalty Program: A hotel offering a loyalty programme whereby they track their customer’s total revenue and translate each dollar spent into one point. Points can then be redeemed for a catalogue of things: for example, 100 points: a free cocktail at the bar; 500 points: a free bottle of wine in the restaurant; 1.000 points: a room upgrade for one night — and so forth.

The opportunities are endless. You can get creative with how you’d like to incentivize your customers to come back. Also, you have to bring your employees on board. They need to be aware of the benefits so that they can tell customers.

However, being stingy never pays. You have to offer value. Otherwise customers will be put off and that’s the last thing you want to happen.