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.