Complaint Management
Handling complaints thoroughly and quickly Effectively dealing with complaints from customers is an opportunity for you to reduce customer churn and improve your business and complaint management processes.
Sigma Connected has extensive complaint management expertise
Customer complaints are, unfortunately, something that every business faces from time to time.
But complaints don’t have to be seen as a huge negative – if you have the right complaint management process in place, it can be a fantastic opportunity to refine your product or service, improve your customers’ experience, and grow as a business.
Of course, this all hangs on the effectiveness of your customer complaint management protocols and the size of your team, as this will dictate your capacity for handling complaints.
And sadly, some businesses don’t have the time or resources to be able to develop a complaint management system that handles complaints in the most effective manner, leading to unresolved issues, unhappy customers, and low customer retention.
Here at Sigma Connected, we adopt a human-first approach when it comes to complaint management. We work with businesses of all shapes and sizes to streamline their service and recover relationships.
When an inefficient complaint management service is in place, it can lead to customers feeling incredibly frustrated and dissatisfied with your business. Ultimately, this can have a negative impact on your customer relations and may even damage your brand image.
So, we put the human back into the customer experience. After all, that’s what makes a customer-centric service work so well!
Combining powerful analytics with a culture of continuous development, our expert team is primed to deliver an unmatched level of customer service and complaint management.
At Sigma Connected, we understand that complaint management is not a one-size-fits-all. That’s why we have created a flexible service that can be tailored to your unique needs as a business. Whether you’re looking to address a specific pain point or after an end-to-end complaints solution, we’ve got you covered.
Did you know that 72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people? This will not only increase customer loyalty but strengthen your brand image and attract new customers to your business. Sound good? We can help.
How it works
Our system is designed to streamline the management of both non-voice and voice complaints.
When it comes to customer complaints, your business will have to deal with a wide range of concerns and queries. Unfortunately, not every situation will be straightforward. With Sigma Connected, we offer front line service to solve as many complaints at first contact. There is also a second line support, as well as a specialist resolutions team for more complex complaints. That way, every complaint can be addressed correctly and resolved with both parties happy.
What you can expect from our complaints management service:
- We aim for at least 90% first call resolution
- Extensive industry knowledge to ensure we meet industry regulations
- Flexible service to suit your needs
- Data to provide root cause analysis
- Efficient system backed by a tried-and-tested methodology
- Dedicated team of experienced customer professionals
- 24/7 support
Complaint management:
Why it’s important to your business
The importance of effective complaint procedures can’t be overstated.
In many cases, it can be the difference between a lost customer and a salvaged relationship, which in turn means that your complaints management can directly impact your opportunity for repeat business in the future.
It’s something that needs to be made a priority for your business.
If managed properly, you can reduce customer churn and improve your complaint management processes off the back of the feedback that you receive from your customers, but first, you need to implement a process that enables those customers to voice their concerns openly.
When you partner with Sigma Connected, we’ll look to review your complaints management process and implement improvements to these protocols where needed, or simply just add additional capacity – our solutions are flexible and designed to give you what you need when you need it.
In addition to this, we’ll also continue to utilise real-time data to identify any key stages where customer churn can be reduced, enabling us to feed into your operations and improve your workflows holistically.
Transforming your complaints outcomes
At Sigma Connected, we have a tried-and-tested complaints methodology. We’ve created an infographic to help visualise the process a customer complaint may take when we are handling them for you, resolving the complaint quickly and efficiently.
Every great business cares about what its customers think, but before you can start to consider what they’re saying, you need to give them the platform to be able to voice their feedback and complaints in the right way.
For most businesses, this will mean creating a dedicated line of communication specifically for customer complaints.
By having a specific channel for this type of content, you can ensure that valuable customers are directed to the correct representative for their concerns – this streamlines communications and ensures that complaints are handled efficiently.
Here at Sigma Connected, our complaints management team is well-prepared to deal with complaints and similar feedback. We’ve trained our teams in best practices for handling difficult situations productively and co
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nstructively, helping to protect your brand whilst resolving issues and improving customer satisfaction.
Once we’ve received feedback from your customers, we’ll begin to analyse the complaint and ensure it’s tracked in the right way – this way we can monitor future complaints to identify trends and patterns that can serve as action points to change a product or service in line with what customers are looking for.
All aspects of customer service are designed to create the best experience possible for every customer that interacts with your business.
Happy customers repay your business with brand loyalty and word-of-mouth endorsements, which can serve as invaluable marketing tools when growing your business or testing new products with your target market.
For us, a key component of our work is to ensure that you’re able to turn your customers’ comments into actionable points – this is where our data collection becomes your biggest asset.
We’ll be able to provide you with quantifiable data that highlights issues in the customer journey, giving clear insights that you can put into practice by altering your process and giving your customers the changes that they want to see.
From here, you’ll find it much easier to review whether your alterations have been effective by considering the number of complaints received relating to the issue that you have addressed. If you see a big reduction or a complete elimination of complaints on that issue, you can mark that as a problem solved!
At Sigma Connected, we try to settle debts sooner with our pre-delinquency and early arrears collections.
Complaints can come and go in waves, especially at times when large changes are happening at your business such as new product launches, price alterations, stock issues, or other problems that may impact a customer’s experience with your business.
When you’re hit with this influx of complaints, it’s natural for you to feel worried about finding the right way to handle them.
Whether it’s a lack of resources stopping you from addressing each customer directly or an absence of situational awareness that’s hindering your ability to diffuse issues and reach resolutions, there are lots of reasons that your complaints management may not be working as it should.
Of course, you don’t want to increase resources by hiring more customer service team members to handle complaints for an issue that’s expected to pass once the necessary alterations have been made.
Increasing complaint handling capacity via recruiting has two major drawbacks:
- An increased risk of redundancies if there is a change in demand
- Additional resources are required for recruitment and training
So, how do you increase your capacity for handling complaints without encountering these drawbacks?
The answer is simple: outsourced complaints management solutions.
By outsourcing your complaints management to the Sigma Connected team, you’ll be able to scale your resources to meet the demand you’re seeing at the present moment in time.
This will mean you’re able to maintain the highest level of customer support despite the rising number of complaints being handled, resulting in a higher level of customer satisfaction across the board and an improved customer experience..
We’ll help you to reduce customer frustrations
We’ll help you to reduce customer frustrations
Poor customer service and complaint management can leave your customers feeling incredibly frustrated and the longer that they’re feeling this way, the more chance there is of that customer churning, meaning a customer is lost.
Once lost, that customer becomes much harder to bring back on side, so we’ll look to prevent customer churn by addressing issues in the customer service and complaint management process – if a customer is unhappy with a product or service, the relationship can still be retained through effective customer relationship management techniques.
Here are some of the common customer frustrations that we’ll help you to tackle:
Longer than average wait times
One of the key metrics that we’ll be looking to help you improve is your average hold time.
The average hold time is the amount of time that a customer is on the line before they’re able to talk to an advisor and the longer this time is, the more likely the customer is to hang up the phone and find advice elsewhere.
Research has found that customers are most likely to end their call at around the 2-minute mark and once they reach this point, only 70% of customers will try to make a second contact attempt.
To us, this says that there’s one chance to help that customer, so you need to make it count.
Minimising call transferring
Once a customer is through to an advisor, they want to find their resolution as quickly as possible, so you must be ensuring that customers are handed to the right department as often as possible.
By hitting the right destination in the first instance, the customer will reduce the amount of information they need to repeat as well as the overall fatigue of the call, creating a more pleasant experience holistically.
By ensuring you have effective call filtering and automation in place during the initial stages of the call, you can ensure that a high percentage of customers calling your support lines are directed to the person that they need to reach, rather than being sent on a wild goose chase to find the information that they’re seeking.
Improving omnichannel presence
In the digital age, customers have their preferences when it comes to communication channels and can be left frustrated when they aren’t able to use their first-choice method to contact customer service or make a complaint.
But with communications coming from all directions on a range of different platforms, it’s easy for the customer’s experience to feel disjointed and repetitive.
We’ll look to minimise these frustrations by reducing barriers and issues caused by a lack of integration, ensuring that your customers are able to receive the support they need on any platform without having to repeat themselves.
With the Sigma Connected team, you’ll find it easier than ever to maintain a high-touch omnichannel presence – we’ll monitor social media channels, email complaints, phone calls, and website chats to ensure that we’re giving your customers ample opportunity to get in touch in a way that suits them.
How we’ll handle customer complaints
Listen and learn
Customers like to feel valued by the businesses that they invest their time and money into, but too often they feel as though they’re just another number.
Our team of customer service experts will ensure that your customers are given the attention they need to feel valued and heard during the complaint management process.
Identify the complaint type
Each complaint is unique, but being able to differentiate complaints into different categories allows us to ensure that we’re able to spot patterns quickly and make changes as soon as we possibly can to reduce repeat instances of the same issue.
Timely responses
Nobody likes to be left in the dark, so we’ll look to give your customers the support they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
We’ll reduce the amount of time spent on hold and deal with questions, queries, and complaints quickly and effectively to keep customers happy and reduce wasted time.
Verify resolved complaints
Perhaps the most important step of the complaints process is verification once the issue is resolved.
Once a complaint has been raised and addressed, we’ll ensure that all resolved cases are verified and documented safely and securely.
This will help us to keep a track of success rates, whilst also giving us more data to review – there could even be improvements to be made to the process that we’re implementing on the back of the feedback that we receive from your customers!
Complaint management service – powered by analytics
When you choose Sigma Connected, you will benefit from valuable, data-driven customer insights. Not only does this enable you as a business to measure the effectiveness of your efforts, but it fosters a problem-solving approach.
The data gathered, including the root, regularity, and scale of complaints, is vital for improving the overall customer experience. By integrating management information (MI) with expert analytics, we are able to provide valuable customer insight back into your operation.
We’ll monitor each complaint from the moment it is raised, giving it a complaint-type classification in order for us to track trends and assign a time-effective solution. Once resolved, each case is documented and reviewed, enabling us to consult on key areas of customer dissatisfaction and prevent repeat instances from occurring.
There are endless benefits to this approach, for your business and customers:
- Improved customer experience
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Increased customer retention
- Enhanced reputation
- Compliance with industry regulations
- Increased overall profitability
Complaint management for a wide range of industries
Complaint management for a wide range of industries
At Sigma Connected, we understand that every industry is different and will face its own set of challenges. We take a unique approach in building relationships to connect our team with your business, and your customers, across a wide range of industries.
A recent Ofgem report reveals that customer satisfaction with energy providers is at an all time low, with response time being a big part of the problem and customers left waiting for hours.
How we help: You’ll get a taskforce with experience in the energy sector, as well as cutting-edge technology and scalability that are tricky to match internally. This means more hands on deck and skilled resource always at the ready to ensure every complaint is handled swiftly and to an amicable resolution..
Full list of our customer support for energy services.
When it comes to the most essential utility, Sigma Connected provides specialist customer contact solutions from a team that knows the water industry inside out.
How we help: We can make a difference for both domestic and commercial customers. Our services include: incident support, additional out of hours contact (10pm-8am), billing issues, direct and third-party complaints, and much more.
Full list of our customer support for water services.
Customers in this sector are often dealing with sensitive and complex financial matters, which can make handling complaints particularly challenging. A robust complaint management process is crucial and so is the support from an FCA regulated business like ourselves.
How we help: Our specialisms include customer services, collections, and problem debt engagement. For debt-related issues, our award-winning service, ReachOut, helps you support and engage with hard-to-reach customers of problem debt.
Full list of our customer support for financial services.
Delivering a complete end-to-end outsourcing solution for all your customer contact points, you can utilise our expertise in the telecommunications sector.
How we help: Expect customer service agents who are a true representation of your brand, for a fully seamless integration. We act as ‘value-added engine’, not only handling complaints but analysing real-time data to make continuous efficiency improvements and cost reductions.
Full list of our customer support for telecommunications.
A consumer shift towards digital shopping has become a challenge for retailers. Customers are expecting swifter responses from brands who are more reachable than ever with the rise in social media.
How we help: Whether it’s business as usual or busy during peak periods, our agile team is always ready to adapt. Our complaint management service can ease the workload and ramp up your customer service to ensure the buzz about your company remains positive.
Full list of our customer support for retail and ecommerce.
Despite the best efforts of travel companies, which were hit particularly hard during the pandemic, mistakes can happen. Customers may experience issues such as flight delays, lost luggage, poor service, or even a subpar experience at a hotel or tourist attraction.
How we help: Sigma Connected’s complaint management service keeps you competitive, making a positive customer experience the goal of every interaction. We can also handle overflow during seasonal spikes.
Full list of our customer support for travel and tourism.
Common complaint management questions that business owners ask
At Sigma Connected, we provide outsourced customer contact services and work with businesses to solve day-to-day problems. We are experts when it comes to complaint management, and can help you through with a high level of field competence – particularly when adopting the human-first approach, which is crucial to customer satisfaction and consumer retention.
As complaint management specialists, we have you covered.
Complaint management is a vital aspect of any business, and its importance cannot be overstated. When managed effectively, it plays a major part in reducing customer churn, improving brand image, and ensuring that customer feedback is channelled into genuine opportunities for business growth.
Put simply, it is the vehicle that mediates and maintains positive customer relations.
With effective outsourced complaint management, the goal is to resolve complaints quickly and efficiently to minimise the cost per complaint. As we have seen above, this can be achieved through the ‘human-first approach’, which allows for maximum customer retainment and satisfaction by giving every case that added level of care.
This approach quickly helps to reduce the open complaints by really rallying resources at that front-end early in the complaint journey, whilst customers are most engaged with the process, which is something Sigma exceeds at.
If your firm is experiencing a high level of complaints, an outsourced customer service solution can save you heaps of time – not to mention put a team of dedicated industry experts at your disposal, whenever you need them.
There is major value in outsourced complaints management, as internally it can be very stressful, and is often seen as a cost centre. If you manage your complaints processes effectively, it should be a lever to improve the customer relationship and ultimately reduce costs.
Sigma offers flexible, quality, bespoke complaint management services for your company through a review of procedure, then implementing remedial protocols and a unique ‘human-focused’ approach you won’t find elsewhere.
Get in touch with our team today
Outsourced complaints management can make a huge difference to your customer service experience, giving customers dedicated lines of communication that make filing complaints and receiving a response easier than ever before.
If you’d like to chat to our team about the options available to your business, you can fill out our handy contact form here on our website – we’ll just need some basic information to get the ball rolling and from there, we can start to formulate a bespoke action plan that works for your business!
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