In case you missed the billions of sales special offers being advertising on tv, via email, and on social media – it’s officially the 2016 holiday shopping season. When the sales push increases so do customer complaints. And some companies deserve to be on Santa’s naughty list.

’tis the season…for bad customer service.

Research indicates that 82% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company because of bad customer service. That’s a staggering statistic – especially considering how much it costs to attract new customers.

If your organization is dealing with customer service complaints – before you can fix a poor customer experience you first need to find out some of the causes.

You have poor processes in place.

Processes – without them not much could get done. So where do you start? Identify which processes you need in place, when, and where. Collect data on what your customer preferences are and accommodate. From the search process to the buying process to the shipping process to the return process to the complaints process. What works well and what doesn’t? What processes keep customers coming back and which push them away? Analyze what types of customer service complaints you are receiving and back track to determine what processes need to be improved. Continually improving your processes makes your organization more flexible and agile to satisfy customers and deal with concerns when they arise.

Your poorly communicate.

In my line of work, I can confirm that communications issues are one of the biggest obstacles affecting business success. This is why over the years I’ve helped businesses like yours improve communication practices – which improves employee performance, engagement, and brand loyalty. Are your customer-facing employees communicating professionally? Are they well trained in your products and services to respond to customer inquiries? Are they listening to customer needs and concerns? Are they empathetic to customer complaints? Can they clearly communicate your policies and processes? Improving organization communication also increases innovation, agility, and responsiveness. This all leads to increased customer service satisfaction, reduced customer acquisition costs, and increased repeat business and brand loyalty! All that leads to increased profit and sustainability.

You don’t pay attention.

Be responsive – when a customer has an immediate need don’t give them the runaround, get back to them right away. Where do employees go for answers? How do employees learn more if needed to respond to customer concerns? If you are their POC and don’t know the answers then find someone who does and get trained quickly. Poor process and communication practices internally lead to very slow responsiveness to customer needs and concerns. If processes do exist for customer resolution – make them simple to understand and follow and educate customer-facing employees on how to execute such processes to promptly respond to customer concerns.

Bad customer service can cost you.

The moral of the story is simple. You need to be willing to take steps toward constantly improving the customer experience. If you’re not paying attention to your customers – not listening and taking action – and continually trying to maintain their loyalty, someone else will. And when they do, they’ll take your customers away from you, and the profits along with them.

So stop pretending the problem doesn’t exist and do something about it before it’s too late.

Need help improving your customer experience? Contact us for a complimentary consultation.

About Scott Span, MSOD, CSM: is CEO & People Strategist, Communications and Change, at Tolero Solutions. He supports clients to engage and retain talent and wow customers, achieving success through people, creating organizations where people enjoy working and customers enjoy doing business.