RECENTLY, I lodged a complaint with one of the country’s leading banks.

Despite follow-ups with their customer service teams over the last two months, the complaint still remains unresolved.

Resolution of the complaint is one thing, what disturbs me the most in this span of two months is the general apathy and lack of customer focus. No contact was established with myself and no effort was made in explaining to me why my issue had not been resolved.

We as consumers have filed complaints at some stage or another — customer complaints are not aimed at the company or at the customer service or sales teams (even if they may sound as if they are). Complaints are usually a result of the customer (like myself in the case above) experiencing something that they were not expecting.

Generally, the issue can be due to the failure of one small part of a much larger service or product and in this case, this failure has diluted the whole customer experience.

Generally, unhappy customers just want to be heard and here the listening skills of the company or its human resource come into play. Using the five simple steps of the LEARN model ensures that they are heard and this is what has been missing in the experience that I recently had.

Listen carefully to your customer. Just let them share their experience with you. Empathise: get an understanding of what this issue has caused for your customer and repeat back, word for word. Create empathy and be in the shoes of the customer. Apologise to the customer even if you feel that you have no part in the problem, say: “I am sorry that you have experienced the situation…” React: decide what you will do to resolve the problem, and tell this to the customer. Now: do not delay. Take immediate action and keep the customer onboard.

Let’s learn and aim to have loyal and happy customers!

Yasser Ul Haq

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2019