How to Decrease Customer Complaints

Are customer complaints driving you crazy? Do they suck up your time, energy, and go-get-em spirit?

What's the best way to avoid them? Prevent them all together.

How? It's subjective. But here's one recent Opichi client that came to us with a big customer complaint issue. It drained their energy and their sales, and they were desperate for something to change...

The Existing Problem

Recently I've took the lead in reviewing the Sales, Customer Service, and Social Media management of an ecommerce pet supply store. Previously, an employee of the store was running these tasks.

She'd rotate between either responding to customer emails, placing orders, or responding to chats - rarely ever all three in one day.

The social media marketing was never aligned with the email marketing and ads.

The website had some image and inventory-linking issues.

She said she was just too busy.

After coming in and looking at her day-to-day, I could see one of the biggest time-sucks was answering order status emails.

Daily, the ecommerce store would receive about 3 web chat inquiries and 5 angry emails demanding "ITS BEN 4 DAYS WEHRE IS MY ORDER????!!!"

(If you're in sales/customer service, you've probably received that exact email verbatim)

Finding this info was a manual process that takes time and the employee's email responses were all over the place with logistical info I can't imagine any customer really cares to know.

Sometimes these emails/chats came from an email address not associated with the order. Disgruntled customers frequently didn't include their order numbers or names when signing off. There was no relevant info to look up an order.

The employee wouldn't always handle this tactfully. She'd respond, "You haven't placed an order."

The customers got livid. The ensuing back-and-forth emails only added fuel to the fire.

This resulted in upset customers --> canceled orders --> angry comments on social media.

Sound familiar?

In turn, this drained the employee mentally. The owners would get looped in to try to put out fires, and they'd get drained mentally, too.

It's not fun to get yelled at all day. And when it looks like everything is going wrong, it's hard to think about how it's going to go right.

Unhappy workers rarely stay long, and the owners needed help.

They needed experts. That's when they came to us.

A Solution

When you bring in experienced marketers, we bring the expertise to look at processes in place (or in this case, not in place,) and say "Hey, it looks like you're spending a lot of time responding to upset customers' order status'. We have tracking info, let's automate this with order status emails."

I worked with Courtney A. Hamp to set up a new automated email for the order confirmation process. When the tracking information becomes available, the customer immediately receives an adorable order status email with a link to their tracking info.

We launched the new order status emails on May 1.

Order status emails and chat requests plummeted!

The store now receives about 3-5 polite weekly responses to these automated emails writing that the link doesn't work and asking to please send an order status update. It doesn't matter if there's no info in the customer's response - the name and order number are in the automated email. (On the rare occassion they don't respond to the email, they're at least in the inbox the automated email came to, so we can look them up by the correct email address.)

They're not technically complaining. They're letting the store know the links don't work to a proactive email keeping them updated about the status of their order. They're pleased we're keeping them informed, and most people understand technical glitches happen.

The customers reframed their emails. Now the store reframes its responses.

Here's how the new customer service responses look:

The customers are addressed by name and we thank them for letting us know about the broken link; the technical team will look into it. We update the customer with only the latest info (i.e., "it's in transit to your local sorting center" or "it's been received by your local sorting center" or "it's out for delivery today!") and estimated delivery date based on our back-end info. Finally, we add that we're excited for them and their pup to receive their order!

The customer almost always sends back a 'Thank you!' More often than not, they include a sweet note about how much their dog loves the store's products. Sometimes they'll even send pictures of their dogs with the store's merch 😍 Hello social proof!

Results To Date

The owners love seeing these emails! They're rejuvenated about their mission and purpose. It reminded them why they had this ecommerce store in the first place.

This single implementation has gained the owners valuable time, literal hours a day. There are still customer service emails that come in, but now email responses take about an hour/hour and a half throughout the day versus 4-5 hours throughout the day.

We're now working with the owners on the next business growth step: create a sales plan to take their business to the next level. They've executed it this week and already have interested large buyer clients!

I've also aligned their marketing across all their channels. Prior to working with us, the morning an email was scheduled to be sent was the same morning the email was drafted. An image would be generated, used for the email once, and never used again.

Now there's a content calendar (and we have time to plan and fill it out), they use their creatives in 3 separate marketing areas - ad campaigns, email blasts, and social media. They're getting more use out of the content they're creating and sending a cohesive message to their audience.

Now they proactively market themselves for holidays, upcoming events, and more. No more reactive scrambling, it's proactive business building!

So All This Begs the Question

Where are you spending time in your business that sucking up your time, energy, and entrepreneurial spirit?

If you know there's a time-suck but can't see it, work with Opichi and we'll help you gain back your time for revenue-generating tasks, excitement, and business acumen with our marketing and business operations strategies!