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As a business owner, the last thing you want is a complaint about your online business. However, at some stage or another, most eCommerce businesses will receive a customer complaint from those online shopping. As such, you need to have excellent customer service. Your customer service team should know how to respond to customer complaints and ensure customer satisfaction. Companies that are physical rather than online can take advantage of face-to-face customer support, which can help handle customer complaints. But as an online business, your eCommerce customer service is unable to do this and may have a live chat instead. There are also laws relating to responding to customer complaints, and you need to abide by these. This article will explain how your online business should handle customer complaints.
Importance of Resolving Complaints From Customers
As an eCommerce business owner, you know the importance of successfully resolving complaints raised by your customers. Resolving a complaint raised by your customers early on reduces the risk of escalation. In turn, this reduces the potential damage your eCommerce business may experience. Also, if your online business resolves the complaint raised by your customers, it is likely they will return to your website. As such, you are likely to generate more recurring revenue from your customers. Handling customer complaints also helps your business to improve. We all can learn from our mistakes. You, as an eCommerce business owner, no doubt are aware of the value of learning from your past mistakes.
Value of a Complaints Policy
A key must for your eCommerce business to handle customer complaints is to have a complaints policy. You are not legally required to have a complaints policy but there are consumer laws you need to follow in your online business. These warrant the need for a complaints policy. For example, the law requires your online business to:
- provide online customers with post-sales information, including any complaints policy, before they make the sale;
- ensure that the above just does not contain misleading information; and
- approach complaints in a specific way, depending on the business type.
Accordingly, you should have a clear and robust complaints policy in place so you can effectively handle complaints from your customers. This should be clearly signposted and displayed on your eCommerce site.
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Best Practice to Resolve Complaints Promptly
The law says that for most service provision companies, which could include your online business, complaints should be dealt with promptly but does not specify an exact timeframe. However, guidance about the law says that your eCommerce business must consider, for example, the following:
- how you contact your customer and the ease of this;
- if there is a need for you to gather information from a third party; and
- if your customer has any language needs.
As an eCommerce business owner, you must also legally ensure you use your ‘best efforts’ to satisfy the customer complaint. One way to do this is to dedicate one of your online business emails or contact details solely to handle your online business customer complaints. You could even dedicate a page or more to this on your website. However, you are not legally obliged to use your ‘best efforts’ to handle customer complaints which are either:
- malicious; or
- have no substance.
This does not include handling your online business’s annoying or inconvenient complaints.
How to Handle a ‘Sold-Out’ Complaint
A typical complaint online businesses get is that the product displayed has sold out. Sometimes a customer can even make a purchase and then receive notice that the product has sold out. This may occur when you have numerous online stores and they sell the same products. The way to handle an online business customer complaint such as this is to ensure you:
- apologise to your eCommerce customer; and
- provide a refund.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Some trades require businesses, which includes some online businesses, to offer Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as a method to handle complaints. Your online business may need to handle customer complaints in this way. If so, you will need to explain this in your online business’s terms and conditions. Also, your website must show the ADR’s business name and website addresses if, for example, you are an:
- eCommerce travel agent; or
- online-based accounting firm.
This factsheet sets out how your business can become GDPR compliant.
Key Takeaways
As an online business, you need to know how you should handle online business customer complaints and the rules relating to this. Not only does this ensure you comply with the law, but it also helps retain your eCommerce customers. This article has explained some ways you can handle customer complaints. For example, it points out that whilst it is not a legal requirement to have a customer complaints policy, this helps you to abide by rules regarding customer complaints. Also, it is vital to deal with complaints promptly and with your ‘best efforts’. If items have sold out and a customer has paid, you must issue an immediate refund. In addition, if you are an eCommerce business in a particular industry, you may have to offer ADR to handle customer complaints.
If you need help understanding how your online business should handle customer complaints in the UK, contact our experienced eCommerce lawyers as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
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