All businesses receive customer complaints. It’s an unavoidable part of having customers. The larger your customer base is, the more unhappy customers you’ll need to manage.
It might seem like there are huge problems with your products or the brand itself, but know that even the very best companies will have plenty of consumer complaints to work through. How you handle those complaints determines the quality of your brand and whether customers will recommend or ridicule you.
What is a customer complaint, and how can it affect businesses?
A customer complaint is when someone who has interacted with your brand contacts you regarding an issue they are experiencing. Common customer complaints include specific faults with a product, billing problems, shipping difficulties, and issues with poor customer service. Regardless of the issue, it is your duty to engage with each complaint and find a viable solution.
For example, a faulty product complaint could be resolved through a replacement item after confirming the fault. A service or software can be trickier to handle, but might involve troubleshooting the problem and assisting the user in rectifying the bug. Customer service departments need to be well-versed in their product lines and capable of dealing with a wide range of issues.
Failing to handle customer complaints can significantly impact businesses. The initial problem itself creates tensions between the customer and your brand, but a prolonged case without resolution will make it worse.
It is a delicate situation to deal with, and customers remember bad experiences far better than positive ones. Reputational damage is entirely possible and can cascade quickly, especially in the age of social media and virality.
What are the typical types of customer complaints?
Customer complaints can come in many forms, including via email, through a live chat portal, on social media, or over the telephone.
Customer dissatisfaction takes many forms:
- Aggressive: This is an angry customer who may be challenging to handle as their focus is on conveying how they feel rather than discussing options. Avoiding small talk and diving straight into the practicalities can work well.
- Expressive: These complaints are equally emotional, but they’re often from people open to discussion. However, they may not be direct complaints—instead, they may be someone complaining about your brand on social media rather than messaging you. Make sure to respond where possible.
- Passive: These dissatisfied customers may be much more neutral in their language and initially seem easier to deal with. However, they’re often made about you, not to you, and you may not hear about it until it’s escalated.
- Constructive: This type of customer comes to you ready with ideas and potential solutions. They’ll try to work with you to fix a problem, though this can still be a challenge if their idea of a fix isn’t something you can provide.
Each approach will change the way you need to engage with them for the best results.
Challenges of customer complaint management
It’s not a simple task to deliver the best customer care day after day. Not only can it stretch resources to take extra time handling complex complaints, but it also hits your bottom line to provide refunds, product replacements, or other resolutions for customers.
These challenges can hit even the most elite of customer support teams, but being aware of them is half the battle.
Maintaining a consistent level of care
As your business scales, you’ll receive more complaints and face higher customer expectations. If you sell 1,000 products with a 0.5% failure rate, that’s five complaints. If you sell 100,000, that’s 500 complaints. You need to respond to them all, to the best of your brand’s ability.
As you receive more negative feedback across multiple touchpoints, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a consistent standard of care. This is made even more difficult as each customer care agent will have their own approach and tolerance, further muddying the waters.
Handling unique and complex cases effectively
The more complex or unusual a customer complaint is, the harder it becomes to solve it effectively. Whether it’s rooted in a strange product defect the business is unaware of or an issue that might involve your business and a third party, such as a payment provider, it can be incredibly hard to find the right solution and do so in a timely manner.
You might need to put in extra effort, such as sending a personal apology letter or setting up a meeting with a supervisor to untangle the problem.
Securing the resources to provide adequate solutions
While customer care might want to provide the best possible solution time after time, there are other factors that businesses need to consider. Replacement products eat into profits, additional time spent on a single case delays the next, and increasing the workforce to handle inbound complaints takes capital and recruitment.
Businesses often underprovision these departments, leading to a range of problems and subpar customer care.
How to respond to customer complaints without escalation
Even if you try to provide a positive outcome for your customers, it is all too easy to upset a customer during the process. You’re already in a challenging position given the nature of them contacting your business, so it takes special care and forethought to avoid an escalating situation.
Much like preparing for an interview in a competitive job market, it’s about answering the questions in the right way, at the right time, with the right emotional tone to get the best outcome. We’ve outlined the four key methods for avoiding escalations and giving customers the best customer support possible.
1. Take time to understand and handle the complaint
Being rushed or feeling unheard is frustrating for customers. It makes the complaint process feel ineffective and creates negative impressions that stick. This approach also increases tension and can lead to escalation—something both parties want to avoid.
Make sure your customer support agents give each customer the time needed to express their concerns and the specific issue experienced. Be inquisitive to explore the problem fully, and respond fully to any customer questions. These steps instil confidence in the customer that they’ve been heard and that a solution will be reached.
2. Don’t wait to investigate – be proactive in your care
Even during the information-gathering process, it’s time to consider the paths to resolution. What avenues do you have to explore the problem? Are there other departments that you can engage with to resolve the complaint?
Is this the best communication channel, or is it worth moving to another? Can you provide a reasonable resolution right away and then investigate internally at a later stage?
A proactive approach to handling the complaint will save time and reduce the likelihood of long communication chains building up. If you cannot resolve the complaint quickly, be sure to consistently update the customer as the investigation progresses.
It’s easy to create a bad experience for a customer who has to contact you because they don’t know what is happening with their case.
3. Take a personal approach and use empathy to engage with customers
While it’s typical to operate from a standard procedure when managing a complaint, that shouldn’t stop you from taking a personal approach. Customer care is about building a connection with the customer and finding common ground.
Empathize with their situation and the stress it causes while assuring them a solution will be found. Simply being heard goes a long way to calm the situation down, which is a key part of avoiding further conflict and escalations to higher departments.
4. Provide a solution in a timely manner and seek to make changes to resolve the issue long-term
You want to find the quickest path to the best solution without rushing and providing a subpar outcome. Sometimes, it’s better to go slower—as long as you keep customers in the loop throughout the process, they will be more understanding than you think. Be sure to keep communications simple and concise, but informative at all stages.
Additionally, you should implement changes if negative feedback touches upon a problem that can be fixed business-wide. Whether this is a product defect or a procedure for handling complaints, if it can be improved, improve it. This will reduce future complaints from your customer base.
Best practices for communication around complaints
While every customer complaint will be unique, there are some tried and tested methods for handling them the right way. From first contact to the closing of the ticket, consider the following practices:
- Always work with empathy and authenticity
- Consider customer expectations and how you can work to meet them
- Focus on finding the right solution for your specific case
- Think about and protect the brand’s perception at all times
- Maintain a paper trail throughout, either through a follow-up email following a video call, or through transcribing tools to record calls
- Avoid incendiary language and accusatory statements
- Set clear boundaries about where the company is at fault for issues, and make sure this company policy is easily accessible to your team
Every customer care specialist will work slightly differently, and it’s generally encouraged to let them work autonomously when handling customers. A customer who feels in opposition with a business will become defensive and combative throughout, making the process more difficult and last longer.
The next steps
Adequate care and support for your customers is as critical to your business as making the sale itself. A quality product or service brings a customer to your brand, but industry-leading customer support will have them become loyal customers and bring others to you.
Focus on your valued customers above all else, put in place the advice from this article, and ensure that every complaint is handled with care and passion—the rest will come.
Frequently asked questions
What skills should a customer care specialist have?
Quality customer support comes down to three primary skills: patience, problem-solving ability, and empathy. While there are several other skills that a quality customer support agent needs, such as product knowledge and communication skills, the ability to take time to understand a complaint, empathize with the customer’s position, and seek a solution that works for them is key.
What are the benefits of quality customer care?
Quality customer care can be the defining point of a brand. If customers know they’re going to be given best-in-class aftercare, they’re more likely to buy with confidence and recommend your products to others. Some of the main benefits include:
- Long-term customer loyalty
- Boost in reputation through word of mouth
- Bolstered sales.
Originally published Jun 05, 2025
