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Complaints Heard Here: How to Complain Online

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At one time or another, almost everyone has had a complaint about a business transaction. Perhaps you have had complaints about a manufacturer that fulfills orders for your online store with defective products, damaging your company’s reputation.

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Or maybe you feel your bank’s terms for your checking and savings accounts are unfair or misleading.

Whatever your current complaint, there are actions you can take. You don’t need to remain frustrated about a product or a situation that isn’t working for you. But what should you do when you have a complaint?

Go Directly to the Source with Your Complaint

When your complaint involves a product or service you have purchased from a legitimate company, you have the best chance at arriving at a satisfactory resolution. In cases such as this, take your complaint directly to the company where you made the purchase.

Most businesses are eager to satisfy their customers’ complaints. They want to be responsive to their customer base, as they understand that customers are the lifeblood of their business. As a business owner, you certainly understand this principle, too, or you should.

Therefore, reputable companies freely offer the services of their customer service departments. The hardy souls who staff these departments listen to customers’ complaints, and they understand what to do to make good on the company’s promises.

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Turn to Social Media

However, let’s say you have already lodged your complaint with the company’s customer service department and have received no satisfaction. What can you do then?

Assuming you have already taken your complaint up the chain of command as far as you can go, there are a couple of things you can do.

The first thing you can do is take your complaint to social media. Post on your own Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts a description of what happened. Tell your followers exactly why you’re unhappy. If the company you’re complaining about should take notice, you’re sure to get a response, hopefully a response that is satisfactory to you.

However, be extremely careful to post only factual information on social media. Tell the story about your complaint simply and with no embellishment, no matter how frustrated and angry you might feel. Anything more or less than the truth could get you into hot water, rather than solve your original problem.

Another difficulty with this approach is that it will only allow you to reach your own social media followers with your complaint. But how can you make your statements reach far and wide?

You need someone to boost your complaint, someone like Complain.biz. This is a website that will amplify your complaint by posting and tweeting about it for you.

And if your business has received a complaint from an unhappy customer online, you can respond publicly through Complain.biz by registering your business here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCEHrynAxf8

Have You Been Scammed?

The worst complaints of all are those you can do little about. For example, if you are dealing with a company that’s based in a country other than your own, there is little you can do except bring public pressure to bear.

Likewise, if have been defrauded by an online scam artist, it’s likely you’ll never see the money you lost to them again. The best you can hope for is to protect yourself and your reputation against further losses.

For example, one woman—let’s call her Nancy—recently complained that she had lost several hundred dollars when she answered an ad for an online job. Nancy had recently been laid off from a long-time job a few weeks earlier. She had been looking for work ever since.

“I was too trusting,” Nancy complained later to a friend. “I felt desperate at the time. The rent was due, and bills were coming in.”

So when the so-called “employer” told Nancy she needed to purchase special software to do the work they had hired her for, she readily complied. If you’ve read others’ stories about online job scams, you know the rest of the story.

Nancy sent the scammers $300, money she could scarcely afford at the time. However, the software never arrived and the work-at-home job never materialized.

Whatever your complaint, it is your responsibility to communicate in such a way that the company you’re complaining about has a chance to make things right with you. And, naturally, if one of your customers is complaining about your business, wouldn’t you want to know about it? That way, you have a chance, at least, of salvaging your company’s reputation.

For more ideas about running your business successfully, be sure to bookmark our blog and come back often.