Respect Your Customers’ Time: Resolve Complaints Quickly

A recent article in The Street pointed out that, on average, adults in the U.S. spend about 364 minutes every year placing calls to report complaints, waiting and hoping to talk to someone who will make things right. In other words, if you are one of the “average people,” you spend about six and a half hours each year on the phone. In six years’ time you lose almost an entire work week, and over 25 years, an entire month of your life will be dedicated to complaining about bad customer service. Much of that time will likely be spent “on hold” (which could in itself be considered bad customer service).

The author of the article, Brian O’Connell, used data from Populus Research and Kana Software, which refer to the “complaint wait” as the “hidden price of doing business.” Here are some other interesting facts that the study produced:

• More than 70 percent of consumers in the U.S. have taken the time to voice a customer service complaint in the last three years. The average time spent to lodge a complaint was one hour and four minutes—for just one complaint!
• In most cases, actually getting problem resolution didn’t just happen in one attempt. 69 percent of consumers had to repeat their complaint, and on average, it took three attempts to get a problem resolved.
• 39 percent of complaints were made by phone call, and 33 percent via e-mail.
• Despite its growing popularity, social media—such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp—was the channel for only 7 percent of the complaints.