Complaint management – essential part of customer centricity - HEART model

Complaint management – essential part of customer centricity

Therefore embracing and implementing the HEART model will have a positive impact on your organisation, will boost your customer (user) experience and make your customer (user) love you!

• HEAR
• EMPATHISE
• APOLOGISE
• RESPOND
• THANK

One of the best known examples of complaint management is a complaint made by a passenger on a Virgin flight, who wrote a letter to Sir Richard Branson complaining about the food. Sir Branson replied to the passenger himself, inviting him to sit on the tasting panel to review the flight food menu. He thus not only offered an apology, but also included the passenger and gave him a say, which strengthens trust and loyalty.

When looking more closely into complaint management, it is clear that it has a dual goal: increasing customer loyalty and ensuring quality assurance. It is thus an important source for companies where they can listen to and engage with their customers. It is also easily available and does not entail a lot of effort.

However, to the day, complaint management and the link to customer centricity is still often overseen by companies.

Therefore embracing and implementing the HEART model (HEAR - EMPATHISE - APOLOGISE - RESPOND - THANK) will have a positive impact on your company, will boost your customer experience and make your customer love you!
May the HEART be with you! ❤

How having a HEART will make your customers love you - Part 2 ❤

Following up on my previous post, it is (or it should be) common knowledge that companies that listen to their customers grow faster.
Complaint management (= listening to your customers) thus plays an essential role in both customer service and business success.
- It is the means to gather valuable customer insights
- It helps your company progress to improvements that lead to reduced costs, increased profitability and increased customer satisfaction
- It is unnecessary to spend huge amounts of money on marketing surveys, as customer feedback provides these insights for free.

Adding complaint management as a specific element in the overall strategy of your company will ensure real benefits. Not only benefits for your customers, but also clear benefits and opportunities for your company, for example:
- Customer satisfaction enhancement
- Product/service upgrade
- Improvement of policies and procedures
- Boost in customer communication
- Positive impact on brand image

So treat every complaint as a pot of gold!

How having a HEART will make your customers love you - Part 3 ❤

Complaint management (= listening to your customers) is an essential element in both customer service and business success.
But of course it is not only about realising this, it is also about acting on it!

The next important step is to set up a complaint management system.
To successfully implement and conduct complaint management, it is necessary to create and implement a framework and certain framework conditions. Below the 3 most important conditions for successful complaint management.

1. A specific organisational structure needs to be put in place, as a fixed component, recognised as important by all stakeholders within the company.The structure also needs to identify and define which units in the company are involved or will be consulted.
   
2. A second condition to successfully implement complaint management is having the right personnel and to train them. As these employees come in direct contact with the customer, it is important they are skilled in diplomacy and de-escalation, and are also able to deal with stressful situations, as not all customers are constructive in their criticism.
   
3. The third condition is the presence of a fully functioning infrastructure. The appropriate software and hardware needs to be available, which enables employees to shape both contact with customers as well as internal organisation in the best possible way.
   

Even the best HEART needs a good system!

By Tara Shrimpton-Smith, Head of Europa Business Unit at U-Sentric - Partner U-Sentric

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