Customer complaints: threat or opportunity? The choice is yours!
- Eric Alauzen
- May 4
- 2 min read
As a hotel or restaurant manager, you and your teams give their best every day to offer your customers memorable experiences, tinged with excellence and attention. You work tirelessly to ensure that every detail counts, and that every moment is synonymous with satisfaction.
But sometimes, despite all your efforts, a grain of sand gets in the way. A link weakens - a clumsy reply, an inappropriate tone, an excessive wait in the restaurant, a disappointing treatment, a cold welcome... The list of little snags is long, and any one of them can be enough to tarnish the experience. Let's not forget that our customers share much more with us than a simple exchange: they stay 24 hours, sometimes a week or more, and every moment spent is an opportunity... or a risk of frustration.
An angry customer is never a foregone conclusion
'Errare humanum est’, said Seneca: It's human nature to make mistakes.
Customer complaints: threat or opportunity? The choice is yours!
But when faced with a complaint, do you and your teams know how to respond appropriately? Are you sure you can defuse the tension, rather than aggravating it with a clumsy response or an inappropriate posture?
Every poorly handled interaction can become a public negative opinion, or worse still: discreet but formidable word-of-mouth.
The restaurant, an area for multiple claims
Dealing with a complaint isn't just about correcting a mistake: it's about protecting your reputation and winning back trust. And that's something you have to learn...
What if a complaint wasn't just a problem to be solved, but rather an opportunity to be seized?
Every dissatisfaction expressed is a precious opportunity to understand your customers, strengthen their loyalty and even exceed their expectations.
A customer who takes the time to complain is a customer who is reaching out to you. They give you one last opportunity to convince them, to turn disappointment into admiration. Better still: if handled properly, a complaint can turn a dissatisfied customer into your most fervent ambassador.
Conversely, ignoring, minimising or mishandling dissatisfaction opens the door to the irreparable: the loss of the customer, the deterioration of your image, and the silent erosion of your reputation.
Handling a complaint with excellence means showing that you are not only aiming for perfection when everything is going well, but also excellence when everything is faltering.
This is where the difference lies between ordinary service and exceptional service tinged with genuine hospitality (see our article).
At EA Pro Nantes Formation, as part of our hospitality skills modules, we're going to teach you how to deal with customer complaints in an intelligent and structured way. How can you do this? By knowing how to:
Welcoming complaints with professionalism and empathy,
Turning a tense moment into an opportunity to build customer loyalty,
Preserving your reputation and reinforcing your establishment's image of excellence.
To find out more about our modules, and more specifically how to deal with complaints, give us a call...
T. +33 7 88 45 30 03 (WA)
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