Handling complaints and apologising well

How you handle a complaint, and especially how you apologise, measurably changes how the customer feels afterwards.

Three kinds of fair

A large meta-analysis of complaint-handling studies found that what a business does works through three kinds of fairness:

How to apologise

An experiment on apologies after a service failure looked at three things: empathy, intensity and timing.

A shape for the reply

Thank them for telling you.Say specifically what went wrong and that it shouldn't have.Say what you are doing about it, and when.If something is owed, offer it without making them argue for it.

Don't count on the "recovery paradox"

You may have heard that customers whose problem is fixed brilliantly end up happier than if nothing had gone wrong. A meta-analysis found that the evidence for this is mixed and depends on the situation. Fix problems well because it's right and it keeps customers, not as a strategy.

The short version

Customers judge the outcome, the process and how they were treated; all three count.Apologise with empathy and conviction, and quickly.A sincere apology after a service failure can matter as much as compensation.Say what you're doing about it, and when.Don't rely on the service recovery paradox.

Try it in Kanvo

Before replying to an angry message, open its ⋯ menu → Ask Kanvo → What led to this? to see the history first. Then write the apology yourself, or have the agent draft it and make it specific before you send.

Sources

Compensation, employee behaviour and procedures work through distributive, interactional and procedural fairness, which drive satisfaction after a complaint, then loyalty and word of mouth.