How To Make A Customer Complaint Successfully
We’ve all been there. After buying a coveted product, be it a home appliance, a mobile device, or an office equipment, it suddenly breaks down without warning and within warranty. We call customer service but all we get are hang-ups, disconnected lines, or that irritating hold music. We are constrained to make an email detailing our complaint but to no avail, so in utter frustration, we just buy a new one and pray it doesn’t break down like the old one.
Making a complaint letter is an art in itself. Some complaint letters are answered but some are left to rot in the dark recesses of the company’s inbox. Here are some tips to make sure your complaint letter gets answered:
Research
Read up on the Terms and Conditions regarding the sale of your product. Check the rules of the company on their website when it comes to warranties and product returns. Make a quick Google search of the company and the product you purchased to see if the error was prevalent or yours was a one-time thing. Check the bar code UPC through a UPC lookup tool.
Short And Simple
The most effective complaint letter is a short, succinct one. Detail the most material points of the incident that led to your complaint. Include pertinent information such as product name, product UPC, purchase date, receipt number, any serial number, and other relevant information. Enumerating all these makes the customer service representative know that you mean business and that you are professional.
Lastly, mention the remedy you are looking for, whether it is replacement, refund, or repair. Keep the letter short. Try to compress it into just one page or under 500 words. If possible, utilize headers when detailing your concerns. Once you have found pertinent company rules that apply to your concern, mention that in the body of the letter. When companies find that they have broken their own rules and regulations, they are more open to listening to your concern and answering them.
Copy Furnish Relevant People
As a kind of insurance, furnish a copy of the email to relevant persons. It can be the company’s president or general manager, a consumer rights group, or a member of the media. When the customer service reads your email complaint and finds that you have sent a copy to other people, they will hasten to remedy your issue. This is because companies value their name and no matter the saying, bad publicity is still bad.
Reminders
Lastly, craft your letter in a polite tone. Avoid profanities and avoid typing in all upper case letters. According to customer service representatives, when they read a letter that is grammatically correct, polite, and reasonable, it makes them want to assist the letter sender, compared to reading a letter filled with vile hate and oozing with profanities, which they just give the barest service possible. Keep your requests reasonable. Unreasonable requests will most often be disregarded. Another reason to lay off the profanities? Company email spam guards filter these profanities out resulting to your letter being marked as spam.
Category: Family Finances
