Consumer or fraud?
Every complaint is an opportunity
Even though your company strives for a 100% quality, sometimes products are not up to standard. All companies strive for having satisfied consumers. Positive consumer feedback is of course the icing on the cake. However, negative feedback is often much more interesting: a complaint gives your company the opportunity to make up for it and to learn from it for the future. How do you deal with a consumer complaint in the year 2019?
Nutrition in the year 2019:
- Many consumers are very aware of their relationship with food. They try diets and food trends, or make ethical choices such as veganism or eco friendly products.
- Mediatised nutritional crises (fipronil, veviba, listeria) paint the consumer’s picture of nutrition.
- Social media are the pre-eminent channel to easily formulate a complaint.
Conclusion: The consumer in the year 2019 is very aware of what can go wrong with food, finds it important to know what he or she is eating and can easily give feedback to a company, be it positive or negative.
Be open-minded: assume that the consumer is sincere
It takes energy to formulate a complaint and to collect all the data. The consumer wants to raise an unpleasant experience, usually to avoid that other people should experience the same thing. Most complaints are well-founded.
Investigate the complaint, don't send coupons straightaway
Show empathy and underline that your company takes this very seriously, investigate every complaint and give feedback to the consumer. If the consumer knows that he is always compensated with coupons, what prevents him from filing another complaint?
Have an offline conversation
Always ask for the consumer's phone number. A humane conversation can bring so much nuance to the complaint. You will soon notice whether a consumer is angry, disappointed or indifferent. This way, your company also clearly shows that it deals with the complaint in a personal way. You might also filter out profiteers - who will often avoid a phone call - by doing so.
Food Security helps its members by:
Providing tools for complaint processing. The registration forms support the first line people in recording a complaint. These can be downloaded from our download centre.
Giving first line training courses to those who are in direct contact with consumers. We teach them the right reflexes in sensitive situations and review which procedures they need to follow.
Testing if frontline employees have the right reflexes and follow the procedures by a spot check. On the one hand, we write a report about how the call was handled, on the other hand, you can check internally whether the correct procedures were followed.
Learning points
How is your company’s Food Defense?
Securing your residence is a given, but securing the workplace comes less naturally. Our practical experience at food companies confirms this.
First aid for consumer complaints
When receiving a sensitive consumer complaint, a swift response is key. Proper complaint management directly affects consumer confidence in your brand and products.
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