On Managing Customer Complaints

The real estate category is largely built on a foundation of service and empathy. As industry leaders, it’s important to address customer complaints with understanding and compassion, reframing criticism as a positive opportunity to grow. In today’s blog, Love&Co’s Michael Love discusses how you and your team can best manage customer complaints and ease apprehension as we learn to navigate a new, post-pandemic world.  

Set A Standard of Response

A complaint is more of a gift than a curse, for someone to have a complaint they need a good reason or an expectation that has not been met. Across all Love&Co departments, we are proud to have a high standard of response. Our teams are thoroughly trained to take time to hear customers out, understand what they are after and identify how to improve from this feedback. From there, we take an in-depth look at how to better our systems, processes and communications.

When handled with care and empathy, complaints have a fantastic ability to encourage change and development. Complaints generally go directly to our branch directors, who by nature are sales people dedicated to doing right by people. Understanding that we run a business based on service is a reminder that prioritising our client and community is always the optimal way to manage a complaint.

A Clean Slate

It’s easy to take a reactive, defensive stance when people are critiquing your business, but to reframe criticism under a lens of gratitude is to use it as an opportunity for growth, providing a clean slate to build from. In the face of early uncertainties around COVID-19 restrictions, the Love&Co team received some concerns from our community, which were taken very seriously and dealt with in a prompt, proactive manner.

If problems or concerns aren’t brought to one’s attention, the opportunity to improve also falls short. As a leader, I take these moments as an opportunity to review our systems and processes, increase team member training and encourage honest, candid communication. A clean slate for learning, growing and seeing things from multiple perspectives.

Enhance your business and deliver on a commitment to service. If  your customers didn’t have a level of care or dedication to you, they simply wouldn’t take the time to provide feedback – negative nor positive.  Take the time to listen, review and consider ways to drive a better experience for your client and the general public.

Support Your Team

A popular sentiment, “you don’t know what you don’t know” rings particularly true when supporting a team to deal with customer complaints. It comes back to the framework of your team showing up to do the best job that they can. As a manager, it’s crucial to explain that the complaint isn’t personally targeted towards your team member, but rather towards the company or job role. Work together as a team to resolve it, employing a high level of understanding and empathy, whilst providing clarity and training in and around expectations of their role.

Michael Love