To better handle customer complaints, owners of small- or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must understand that purchases are the culmination of two arguments: a logical one based on advertised specifications and, importantly, an emotional one based on a customer’s feelings about a product. Thus, once a customer commits to a purchase, disruptions to their buying experience will create a negative emotional response. This is the reason complaints about payments can be especially tough to settle, regardless of the monetary value involved.
Once you and your customer-facing employees realize this, you’ll be better equipped to handle payment complaints empathetically, resulting in faster resolutions and better customer experiences. However, as important as empathy is, there are still some critical guidelines you must follow to ensure that payment experiences that have gone awry still end with positive outcomes.
Use these smart tips to quickly solve complaints and turn unhappy customers into future brand advocates:
1) Offer Multiple Payment Solutions
Offering multiple payment methods does two things. First, it allows you to better address today’s diverse payment scene and gain sales from buyers with different payment preferences. Second, it gives you a backup in case a customer’s preferred payment method doesn’t work.
Flexible solutions like payment links can be an especially useful solution for SMEs looking to build better payment processes. These solutions allow you to give customers a link over chat, email, or SMS that will take them to a secure payment gateway. From there, they can pay with their choice of bank account, card, or digital wallet. Some solutions, like Maya Payment Links from the Philippines’ Maya Business, even facilitate secure QR payments for QR Ph-compliant accounts, further simplifying the payment process.
2) Listen Actively to the Customer
Any business team member who approaches a payment complaint with a suspicious or antagonistic attitude will surely delay resolution and may even damage your brand. Before jumping to conclusions, take the time to listen carefully to your customer’s complaint and to ask questions in a friendly, constructive way. Taking a more open approach to their concerns will help you understand their issue without antagonizing them, opening up the door to a continuation of your relationship.
3) Respond ASAP!
As mentioned above, payment issues have an emotional aspect to them, which means that a prompt response will almost certainly be appreciated. Responding quickly should prevent the issue from escalating and demonstrate how much you respect your customer’s time and feelings on the matter. Even if you don’t have a solution right away, simply being able to acknowledge the complaint and showing that you are doing something will be essential for de-escalating the situation.
4) Verify the Payment Details
Though you do want to be friendly and approachable when it comes to addressing complaints, you must also be careful to verify all payment details on your end. Even as you maintain an amicable demeanor, you have to ensure that the customer’s complaint is valid by confirming the amount, date, and method of payment.
5) Stay Calm and Professional
Payment gaffes are bound to result in some upset customers. However, as irate as your customer gets, it’s important to remain calm and professional at all times. In most cases, a measured response is what you need to defuse the situation and move forward with the resolution. Focus on finding a solution that satisfies both parties and develop your mental conditioning so that you stay in control when emotions start running high.
6) Educate Your Customers
Quite often, payment complaints arise because customers don’t understand your payment process. In particular, digital payment processes can be challenging to implement in markets that are used to in-person payments.
Regardless, it helps to educate your customers on how to use the payment methods you offer, including simplified options like payment links. Providing clear instructions or video tutorials can help guide new customers on how to buy from your store, which should help prevent misunderstandings and reduce the number of payment complaints that come your way.
7) Implement a Clear Refund Policy
Aside from educating customers on payments, you’ll also want to offer a clear refund policy to better manage customer expectations and reduce disputes. Make sure your refund policy is clearly stated on your website as well as on any other sales channel.
8) Seek Feedback and Improve
Your job isn’t done after you resolve a complaint. Requesting feedback from your customers is an important way of ensuring that mistakes won’t be repeated—at least, not from your end. Make it part of your customer service process to ask for feedback at the end of each session or shortly after. This feedback should be documented and made available to all customer-facing employees so that they better understand the problems encountered during the payment process.
Turning Your Payment Challenges into Positive Customer Experiences
The effective handling of payment complaints is usually a matter of consistently applying empathy and proven customer service practices. Following these tips should result in improved customer satisfaction as well as stronger repeat business over time.
