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This article is one of a series about how to improve your
complaints handling. It will be especially useful to call handlers and
customer service personnel. It is written by an expert trainer in the
field who runs a specialist complaints handling training business as well as a
leading corporate training company in the UK.

If you do some reading on complaints handling
you must be thinking of improving your complaints handling skills or those of
your team. Most writers on the subject
focus on the need to approach the customer who is complaining with
empathy.

What is empathy?

Empathy
is a word often used but I wonder how well understood it is. At a recent course we were running on
complaints handling we posed this question.
Asking delegates to define empathy proved interesting. It was clear to me that the word sympathy and
empathy were being confused.

So
before I can establish empathy with you, I need to know what empathy is. The dictionary definitions vary but touch
upon: understanding of another’s situation and feelings. This is different to sympathy which is more about
feelings of pity or sorrow for the distress of another. Definitions also mention compassion.

So
when dealing with complaints I am aiming to be empathetic to understand and
anticipate the behaviour of the customer. It is in effect standing in the shows
of the customer. So much for the
conceptual discussion. How does that work in practice?

How does empathy work?

Take
a complaint about some flowers not being delivered by a florist. The customer plucks up courage to complain. He is stressed by the simple process of
calling. He does not know how the call will be received and naturally expects
the worst. He has complained before to other shops and been fobbed off. The customer swallows hard
and calls the shop to say the bouquet has not arrived.

The
untrained inexperienced call handler might say: Thank you for telling me about
this. What can I do to put this right?

The
call handler is trying to be helpful and resolve the situation. However, the result from the customer is to
raise their voice, their heart beats faster, they are getting angry. This call is off to a bad start. The problem cannot be made right. The flowers were not delivered and a anniversary celebration diminished by it.

Picture
this as an alternative this response:

Im
sorry that we havent delivered the bouquet as we expected. I understand that must be difficult for you, embarrassing
and annoying, let me try and do something about that right now. To do that may I have your name and the
delivery address please?

This
is more likely to strike a chord with the customer. Did you spot the:

·
empathy?

·
identification with the distress of the
customer?

·
apology too?

What about the control of the call? I mean that in the sense that the call
handler was leading the conversation towards resolution. This was helped by asking a closed question
to gain control. All this was done in a
helpful, assertive but friendly way. Clearly there is more to do, but this positive approach will send the message to the customer that the call handler wants to try and resolve the complaint and understands their emotions.

So
you can see a dose of empathy is good news for complaints handling, but there
is more to it. Ill be tackling another
aspect of complaints handling soon.