A business’ customer service will run into a large variety amount of complaints. Complaints can range from general issues with the product to requesting money from the business.
General Complaints
Customers will always have general complaints on a product.
On the customer service side, a business should make a decision on how to handle general complaints. Businesses may have their own process to dealing with complaints about the product to defective products. Processes can be a replacement of the product, refunds, or repairs. If a business is offering a warranty with the product, the business should see whether the product fall under the warranty. If the product falls under the warranty, the business should honor it.
Within the business, the business can utilize complaints. Complaints are a form of feedback where businesses can see where there are pain points in a product. For future versions of the product, a business can try to alleviate those pain points. Typically, a business focusing on these pain points may end up developing “new inventions” as well. I put new inventions in quotes because a small change in a device may end up being enough to be considered patentable as a new invention.
Extraordinary Circumstances
There are times when a business receive a complaint about an injury from the product. A business should be careful in how they handle these types of cases.
Damage to property: If a product ends up causing damage to property, a customer may want to have the property replaced and make the business pay. If this becomes a lawsuit, a court will generally award an amount to make the customer whole again. That amount will most likely be the loss in value of the property that was damaged.
On a business perspective, if a business is sued for property damage, the amount awarded to the customer may be pretty small. But a business may not want to go through the headache of litigation or even pay a lawyer to handle the litigation just for a small amount of money. In addition, it may also be better for the business on the customer service side.
Injury to the customer: An injury to a customer may come up as a lawsuit or through customer service.
If a business is sued, hiring a lawyer will definitely help a lot. If the business is found liable, a court may award an amount including, but not limited to, the the costs incurred by the customer to seek medical help and pain and suffering from the injury. Pain and suffering is hard to calculate but courts have awarded amounts in the 100,000 to millions of dollars.
If an injury comes up through customer service, a business should be very careful in handling the situation. Getting a consultation with a lawyer will help out a lot. However, a business may want to try to avoid litigation by negotiating with the customer.
Business Considerations
Waiver of liability: If a business ends up paying customers for any reason, a business should have a waiver of liability signed. A business would want to have a release of liability to avoid the customer from taking the offered amount and still filing a lawsuit against the business.
Payouts: A business should be careful in who they pay out. A business should get enough evidence to be able to verify an incident has actually occurred. In the e-commerce world, there are many scammers looking to get easy money from a business. If a business is known to pay customers for every complaint, the business may end up finding itself getting more and more similar complaints.