How to Respond to Complaints the Right Way in English

Hi I'm Anne Marie with Speak Confident English and welcome to your Confident

English Wednesday lesson. Now it is no surprise that dealing with complaints in

any language is really awful. It is uncomfortable, it's stressful.

No one likes talking to an angry customer or someone who's upset. Last

week in our Confident English lesson we focused on how to make a complaint when

something happens to you and you're upset. You want to fix it. But we also

need to understand the other side -- what to do when someone makes a complaint to

you. Maybe your job is to fix problems and handle customer complaints. Or maybe

something happens with your neighbor and they're kind of angry at you and they

come to you with a complaint. What do you do to keep that relationship with your

neighbor? Or what do you do to keep a client so that they don't leave you for

another company? That is what we're going to focus on in today's lesson.

Okay so today is all about how to respond to complaints the right way in

English. And we're going to focus on four simple steps that you can use and follow.

And I'll help you with the language that you should use -- language that native

speakers use every day to handle complaints in the best way. We're going

to focus on how to listen, apologize, take action, and then follow up.

But let's get a little bit more in depth with each one. Now the first step is to

listen. Listen to the person making a complaint and that seems easy right? But

did you know that in English we actually have sounds and words that we use to

show that we're listening? In some cultures it's perfectly normal to stay a

hundred percent silent when you're listening to someone but not in English.

Here are a couple of things that you can do to effectively show that you're

really listening, that you really care about the complaint. You'll often hear

native speakers make sounds like mm-hmm, I see,

yeah. All of those little sounds mm-hmm,

yeah, I see those sounds indicate that we're listening to you or listening to

another person. And if those sounds or words are new for you, if they sound a

little silly, practice using them on your own. You can practice when you're by

yourself but those are really important, especially if you're talking to a native

speaker to show that you're listening. Now since we're talking about responding

to a complaint, you can use those sounds and words to

show that you're listening and then you can also use a few questions to help

clarify the situation or make sure that you understand it. And again, this shows

that you really care, that you really want to understand the problem. For

example you can say something like, "Could you tell me a little bit more about what

happened?" Or "Could you tell me exactly what happened?" And finally, "Let me see if

I understand this correctly..." and then you would summarize what you understand

about the problem. Now that you've listened and you understand the problem,

the next important step is to apologize. this can be the hardest step because

maybe you don't think anything is really wrong, maybe you don't really understand

the problem but this is also what your customer, what your neighbor or someone

who is offended wants the most -- they want an apology. So here are a few

common ways that native speakers apologize when something's wrong: "I'm

really sorry this happened to you." "I'm terribly sorry.

We're going to fix this right away." "I understand why you're so frustrated and

I'm really sorry." "I know this is a huge inconvenience and I'm really sorry about

that." And now that you've apologized it's time to take action. So depending on your

specific situation this might be providing a refund to a client or fixing

something that's broken. Maybe you need to resolve a conflict and to take action

you can do two things: one you can say exactly what you're going to do

for example, "I understand why you're frustrated. I'm sorry you're not happy.

We'll give you a refund right away." And there is the action -- we will give you a

refund right away. Or we're going to schedule someone to come fix the problem

today. We're going to schedule someone to come tomorrow to resolve the issue. Or

you can simply say something like, "I'm going to fix the problem right away." "I'll

get that fixed right away." Now the second option is to ask a question if you're

not sure what the other person wants and this is more common when it's a personal

relationship. Again imagine that you've broken a fence that your neighbor built

or something negative happened and you don't know what they really want, you can

just ask. For example you could say, "What can we do to fix this?" Or "What would you

like me to do to fix this?" And finally, after you have listened, apologized, and

taken action, you want to follow up. After you fixed the problem, resolved the

conflict, replaced a product, or gave a refund, you want to make sure that your

customer, your friend, your neighbor is happy, that everything is ok. And to do

that you can simply send an email, make a phone call, go talk to your neighbor and

ask them something like: "Did everything work out okay for you?" Did everything

work out okay for you? Are you happy with the solution? Is the new product working

okay for you? Are you satisfied with how we fixed this? Are you satisfied with how

we fixed the problem? And almost always when you ask those

simple follow-up questions your customer or your next-door neighbor feels so

happy because you care. You cared enough to ask if everything is okay. And with

that you have four simple steps plus all the language that you need to respond to

complaints the right way in English. Now as always I do have more expressions

that you can use in the online lesson, so review those expressions, add those to

your active vocabulary and I have a challenge question for you at the end.

Thank you so much for joining me, I love having you here every Wednesday and I'll

see you next week for your Confident English lesson.