Resolving Customer Complaints In Your Moving Company

Hey, my friends, it's Louis Massaro and welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

I know you're going out there every day and you're focusing on creating a raving fan out of your customers, right? You're, you're trying to do a good job, you're trying to make sure they have a great move, you're trying to make sure you get five star reviews. But what happens when you get a complaint, right? What happens when they're not happy about something? It's gonna happen, right? I know you go out there every day and you try your hardest to make sure that you have happy customers, but every once in a while, you can't make everybody happy, right? So it's not bad that you get a complaint here and there. It's how you address those complaints, how you deal with those complaints, how you resolve those complaints that's gonna allow you to, to build a successful company. Alright? So I want to give you five steps to resolving customer complaints when they happen. Because you know what, when you address them when they're small, they're small, manageable complaints. If you don't address them when they're small, they become big, unmanageable complaints. All right, so let me give you the five steps. First thing is make sure, don't take it personal, all right? If you're in business, if you own a business, you just have to accept the fact that, that you're dealing with the public, you're dealing with people at a very stressful time, right? Moving is so stressful. It's the third stressful thing someone does. You know this. So just understand they're having a bad day and if they're taking it out on you, you know what, that's your responsibility as a business owner. You just have to accept it, right? Not take it personal and work to resolve it. All right? So just know if they're calling and they're screaming at you or your staff or your dispatcher or customer service.

Just accept it at first. Don't get on the defensive with them and get into a battle that's just going to make it worse. So don't take it personal. And then what you want to do is seek to understand.

Because a lot of times what they call about, what they're complaining about isn't really always the problem. In other words, they're upset about something. But when you really seek to understand what's really going on, on their move, what they're really upset about, and you take some time, talk to them about it, you may Realize that they called in with a list of five things that were so terrible about the move. And it really all comes down to like one little thing. And once you figure out what that one little thing is, then you can resolve it. But you have to seek to understand where they're coming from. Put yourself in their shoes, alright? So first what you do is you don't take it personal. That's going to allow you to put yourself in their shoes and let them talk to you and find out what's really going on.

Third, you want to make sure you're timely and responsive. All right? This is so important because if you ignore complaints, if somebody calls in or sends an email or leaves a message or tells your mover that they're unhappy with the move and you're not getting back to them quick, what do you think's happening? Every minute that goes by, every hour that goes by, every day that goes by, they're just getting more and more upset. All right? So like, what was maybe a small problem is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, all right? And when we talk about being responsive, that means if you speak to someone and you say to them, you know what, let me look into this, let me speak to the movers, let me find out everything that happened and kind of gather all the information and I'm going to get back to you later today. Get back to them later today, all right? Don't tell somebody you're going to do something and then not do it. All right? So even if you don't have anything to report back to them, right? If you need to speak to a customer and you let them know you need to speak to your crew, you need to find out what happened and you're going to get back to them. If you didn't get a chance to speak to your crew or you weren't able to really discover everything that happened by the time you told them you were going to call them back, call them back anyways and just tell them, I told you I'd give you a call back. Here's an update. I still need to speak to my crew. I still need to find out what happened. Can you give me till tomorrow to get back to you? And whatever time you tell them you're going to call them, call them back. It's so much more. I see this happen all the time and companies will say, you know what, But I didn't have anything to say to them. It doesn't matter. If you tell somebody you're going to call them back at a certain time Call them back, be responsive. All right? Fourth.

Resolve the complaint. I know this might seem obvious, but you can't just let a complaint linger, alright? You can't just let it think that it's just going to go away. You have to make sure that when it comes in, you have your process of taking them through, find out what happened and, and resolving it. And you know what, sometimes resolving it might mean not giving them what they want, right? But you have to be able to go through the file. You have to be able to go through your complaint resolution process. If you don't have one, you should have one. All right? What you do when a complaint happens, what is your process? How do you take them through it to find out what really happened to determine what you're going to do for that customer. And if you determine that, you know what, we can't give them what they want, then you need to let them know that. Because again, not responding to people, stringing people along is only going to make them more upset. All right? You're better off saying, this is where we stand. This is what we're able to do for you. This is what we're not able to do for you. And you know, because sometimes you can't always give them what they want. You should try to, you should always shoot for that, right? Sometimes it might not be reasonable, right? So you have to determine what it is. But always resolve the complaint one way or the other. Resolve it as customer satisfied or resolve it as customer unsatisfied. One way or the other, it's resolved, right? And it's not just lingering out there to, you know, all of a sudden come back around out of nowhere and bite you. Alright? This is the fifth, and this is really the most important out of all of them, alright? And this is to correct internally, all right? You had the problem, you had the issue, all right? What caused that issue? Was it an employee? Does that employee need more training? Right. Is it your process? Right? The way that you do things, is it causing these type of complaints to happen? You have to look at what caused the complaint and correct it internally. And you only do this after you resolve the complaint. Always address the customer first, always deal with the customer first and resolve their issue and then always come back and say, what could we have done differently as a company? What could we have done better? Who needs more training? What adjustments do we need to make to our processes and correct the problem internally? Never leave the sight of a complaint without looking at yourself, without looking at the company and saying what could be improved that's how you get better, right? Great companies don't just appear, they don't just pop up. Everyone's gonna have mistakes, everyone's gonna have problems. Complaints are gonna happen. But it's when you take them and use them as an opportunity to get better is when you become great. All right, so again, make sure you're going out. I'm sure you're trying to make every single customer a raving fan, but if they have an issue, if they have a problem, go through these five steps. Resolve it immediately and always, always, always correct it internally. Look for a better way of doing things and use it as an opportunity to learn and improve.

And if you're ready to take your moving company to the next level, make sure you check out my brand new on demand training on how to consistently book more high paying moves all year long. It's called the six stages of a moving Company sales machine and you can access it right now for free@lewismassaro.com.

Six stages. In this training, you'll learn the steps you need to take to increase your sales with a smooth running, consistent, consistent process. This is the same process I use in my moving companies to book 12,000 moves a year. And now I'm training you on how.

To implement it in your moving company for free.

It's available now@lewismassaro.com Six stages.

Sam.