Customer Relationship Management

Individual Assignment

Submitted by
Garima Tyagi
19P018
 Customer Complaints Handling

Customer Complaint Handling at The Hunger Cycle Cafe- Personal Experience

I ordered a plate of veg momos from a cafe in my hostel which had in it one non-vegetarian
momo. I was very angry and I called Saumit, the guy who ran the cafe, to complain about the bad
experience I’ve had. To my surprise, instead of apologising, Saumit took the entire thing very
casually and said- “Congratulations Garima, you are a non-vegetarian now!”. I cut the call and
never ordered from the place again.

The problem with Saumit’s reaction was in using the one size fits all strategy. His
reaction might have worked for some other customer, but it did not for me. To me, it was him
trying to make me believe that “it is not a big deal” even though it was. Everybody makes
mistakes, and making me believe that the cafe is genuinely sorry for what happened, and that it
would never happen again would have worked.

A lot goes into acquiring and retaining customers and it takes as simple as one incorrect
response to lose one. All businesses, big and small, will face customer complaints at some point
and hence, it becomes extremely important to deal with customer complaints in a healthy and
constructive manner. The way a company handles its customers’ complaints not just help them to
not lose a customer but may also work for them to create a positive word-of-mouth marketing
and help them stand out from other companies.

Customer Complaint Handling at PhoneCurry- Primary Research

In order to understand how small companies and start-ups ensure handling of customer
complaints, I talked to the co-founder of PhoneCurry.com which is a website that gives phone
buying advice and so far has served more than 10 million customers.

Person Interviewed- Manish Kumar, Co-founder, PhoneCurry.com

The types of complaints that phoneCurry team receives are of 3 broad types-

1. Complaints about missing functionalities (suggestions)- e.g. a feature or a particular

mobile set that the website does not consider at present and the customer would like it to.
2. Incorrect or misleading information on the website- e.g. incorrect specification of a
particular phone
3. Dissatisfaction from the website’s recommendation. These arise when the customer
believes that the made recommendation is incorrect and that they have been wronged in
some way.

PhoneCurry has a small team of 7 members. The task of complaint handling involves a 5
step procedure and is delegated to one person along with other responsibilities. The 5 step
process involves-
1. Checking email for new complaints
2. Registering complaints in a database after understanding it properly- This is to be done
within 2 days of receiving the complaint
3. Discussing options for fixing the problem within the team
4. Resolving the query as soon as possible and within 14 days

A senior member of the team is responsible for ensuring weekly checks on the complaint
management database. Currently, the only mode of receiving complaints is through email and
they expect to incorporate a chat bot in the near future for enhanced customer interaction. In
terms of policy, an initial automated email is sent as a reply to all emails stating the team will get
back in less than 14 days. PhoneCurry ensures that no complaint goes unattended for more than
14 days. Next, the team looks into the nature of the query:

Use Case 1: If the complaint is something that is missing in the way the recommendations work,
or a missing functionality, then if it is a known issue that the company is working on, they have a
fixed reply template that acknowledges the problem, apologises, and lets the customer know that
the team is working on it. If the suggestion is new- something the team is not aware of, they
either fix it if it’s fixable (again, this is a top-priority situation for the company, and they try to
fix within 14 days at max) and thank the customer and let them know that the complaint has been
resolved or let the customer know that the team will look into it and get back to them once the
query is resolved.

Use Case 2: Dissatisfied Customer from the website’s service. Manish explained this using an
example. There was a customer who once purchased Samsung Galaxy m21 and based his
purchase on the recommendation made by the website for his price range. After using the phone,
the customer did not like it and wrote a strongly worded email to complain about PhoneCurry’s
recommendations. Complaints like these are rare for PhoneCurry, and did not make sense either
for the website. Anyway, PhoneCurry wanted to make the customer feel heard and engaged with
him further to understand the difficulties he was facing with his handset. After understanding the
challenges the customer was facing, PhoneCurry looked into their feedback database to realise
that this was the only customer who faced the particular issue and guided him to raise his
concerns with Samsung Customer Care directly. The handset for the customer was replaced and
he was grateful to PhoneCurry for helping him out.
This, however, could have gone the other way as well. Sometimes, some customers do not
understand that the app recommends based on its algorithm that compiles multiple reviews and
customer feedbacks and are disappointed for the wrong reasons. These are the customers
PhoneCurry decides to let go of.

In contrast to PhoneCurry’s customer complaint handling process, large MNCs handle

customer complaints very differently. In order to make the comparison relevant, I have compared
complaints handling related to the mobile application of a big company.

Customer Complaints Handling at American Express- Secondary Research

Amex Mobile App Customer Complaint Management

American Express has a closed loop data accessibility hence, all its processes are data
driven. For mobile app complaints too American Express uses data analysis to generate replies,
resolve queries, and add future features and functionalities to the app.

American Express takes into consideration its app complaints from 3 sources- Apple
Store and Google Play Store reviews, app usage statistics and chat complaints, and customer
service executives and emails. Since, the customer base and as a result number of complaints are
huge for American Express, it has specific, separated teams for mobile app analytics and
complaint redressal. There is a team that ensures timely response to queries raised on Apple and
Google Play Store and mobile app chat bot, a separate team consisting of customer care
representatives who answer the calls, and a third mobile app and chat analytics team that takes
input from both these teams in the form of database, combines it with its own database of
customer complaints posted on multiple sites and perform analysis on it to give long term
recommendations and resolution suggestions to respective business teams.

The Complaints Management Maturity Model

 1

The complaints management model talks about how as organisations move up the
maturity curve, they become more proactive in identifying and resolving customer complaints.
The higher the company is in its maturity stage, the more it develops its capabilities to leverage
data. If we look at companies like Amazon, and Google that stand out for their extraordinary use
of a customer’s data to offer a personalised experience not just while navigating through their
websites but also in terms of complaint resolution. Big Basket is another company that is moving
up the maturity curve- one time stock for a purchase I had ordered got over, so Big Basket
delivered my favourite brand of biscuits for free in place of that. Experiences like these can only
be offered by companies that keep customers at the top of everything they do. However, there is
a fine line between companies being optimal and intelligent and being overstepping and sneaky
and that fine line needs to be taken care of during the entire customer journey- especially during
customer complaint retrieval because this is the time when a company is at its most vulnerable
position with respect to a customer and cannot afford to make a mistake.

1
​Deloitte., 2020. ​Unlocking The Value Of Complaints
Citations

1. PhoneCurry. 2020. ​Phonecurry: Find Your Perfect Phone!.​ [online] Available at:
<https://www.phonecurry.com> [Accessed 20 November 2020].

2. Deloitte., 2020. ​Unlocking The Value Of Complaints.​ [online] Available at:

<https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/regulatory/articles/unlocking-value-of-customer-complain
ts.html> [Accessed 20 November 2020].

3. Americanexpress.com. 2020. ​Customer Complaint & Grievance Redressal Policy.​ [online]

Available at:
<https://www.americanexpress.com/in/legal/customer-complaint-grievance-redressal-policy.html>
[Accessed 20 November 2020].