Complaints are treated as interruptions. Somebody deals with it, it gets resolved or it does not, and nothing about the business changes.
That is a waste of the most direct feedback you will ever get.
First, respond faster than you resolve
These are different things. Acknowledgement should be near immediate. Resolution can take as long as it takes.
Most anger comes from silence rather than from the original problem. A message within the hour saying you have it and are looking, buys you the day you actually need.
Let them finish
The instinct is to explain. Explaining before someone has finished sounds like defending, and it makes them repeat themselves louder.
Hear it out, then say back what you understood. Half of complaint handling is the customer believing they were heard.
Separate the fix from the fault
Whose fault it was is a different question from what happens next, and only one of those the customer cares about right now. Lead with what you will do and by when. Fault can be discussed later, or often not at all.
Write it down, every time
This is where the system part lives. Date, customer, what went wrong, root cause, what you did.
One complaint is an incident. Twelve complaints, sorted, is a list of the three things your business keeps getting wrong. Almost nobody has that list, because nobody recorded the first eleven.
Close the loop
A week later, one message asking whether it is genuinely sorted. Almost nobody does this, which is exactly why it is remembered.
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