Customers complaining directly to the CEO? Make it stop.

CEOs are often the most visible face of a company. Irate customers know that all too well—and aren’t shy about sliding into the CEO’s DMs (or email, or other public channels) to voice their displeasure.

These shortcuts are, more often than not, a “last-ditch effort” to resolve their problem—and a failure of the company’s customer support apparatus—argues Mukesh Mirchandani, senior VP of solution engineering at Freshworks, in an article for CustomerThink. 

“They do this when they feel their concerns aren’t adequately addressed within the organization, or when the process to find a resolution is taking too long,” he writes. “After all, feeling seen and heard is a very basic human need.”

But customers should never reach that point. Mirchandani advises companies to take proactive steps to prevent unhappy customers hitting up the CEO. Among the measures he suggests: 

• Soft skills training to make agents more empathetic

• Establishing clear and efficient communication channels for customers to reach support

• Authorizing frontline staff to make compensatory offers (with reasonable limits)

• Reducing friction in customer journeys through customer-friendly policies

Companies should also consider the latest tech tools, such as generative AI, in their toolkits to fix issues before they wind up on the CEO’s screen. 

Read the full article on CustomerThink.

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