Time of day: Of customer complaints and business responses

For so long customers remain human and businesses are equally run by humans, there are always going to be possibilities of things not going according to plan. Things sometimes go wrong. The customer’s expectations are sometimes not met and when that happens, customers are bound to complain.

Because customer complaints are very much an important part of business-customer interactions, it is equally important that businesses put much interest into managing complaint management. Complaint management must not be left to chance.

Conventionally, the main issues that occupy the minds of businesses when it comes to customer complaint management are the ease of complaining for customers and also the timing of the response to complaints. Firstly, businesses know that if customers do not get the opportunity to complain easily, customers will eventually move to the competition.

This is why businesses have, over the years, resorted to all kinds of ways and means to receive complaints from customers. Suggestion boxes, specific email addresses to receive complaints, and in-person complaint requests are all ways by which businesses ensure that customers do not have to suffer before complaining.

Secondly, it is one thing to receive customer complaints and a different thing to respond to them. It is in the response of businesses to customers that things can go wrong for the business-customer relationship.

Among the many things that can go wrong with the response is the timing of the response. If a customer feels the response to a complaint has taken too long in coming, the customer might not be too happy.

This dissatisfaction could lead to negative word-of-mouth implications for the business and overall unfavorable evaluations by the customer. Some reports have it that 41% of complaining customers expect an email response within 6 hours of sending their request.

The same study found that only 21% of customers who lodge complaints see a 24-hour response time as an acceptable waiting time. In other words, 8 out of 10 customers find it unacceptable that have to wait for a whole day before receiving a response to a complaint.

Of customers who engage with businesses online, 71% expect to interact with live assistants within just five minutes of lodging a complaint. Even more worrying for businesses, it was found that for those online customers, if a response did not arrive within the expected time frame, 48% would take their business away to another company. That’s how ruthless and unforgiving today’s business terrain is.

The magic of modern technology has really “spoilt” today’s customers. With smart gadgets at their disposal, customers of today can get any information as and when they need it. Events happening in far-flung countries are beamed directly to their smartphones in a matter of seconds. All this means that today’s customer is very “impatient”.

The initial response time is so important that it sets the tone for the entire interaction. When the response is prompt, it sends an indication to the customer that the business values the relationship. A prompt reply signals to the customer that the issue being complained about is a priority. A prompt response is also an indication that the company values the customer’s time.

A prompt response tends to boost the satisfaction of the customer and this will end up enhancing the confidence the customer has in the relationship. The feeling of being heard and being respected is important for the customer. In the same vein, when a business takes its time to respond to a customer, the customer may feel neglected and even disrespected. This does not augur well for the relationship, in the long run.

Traditionally, the way businesses have always tried to handle complaints received from customers is by adopting the “first-come, first-responded to” approach. As and when complaints are received, they are responded to. The faster the response, the better. This could even explain why businesses have used both humans and technology to ensure that complaints are responded to as soon as they are received.

It is therefore of interest to note that it has been suggested that sometimes, it is not the length of time it takes the business to respond that matters. In a study published in the December 2023 edition of the Psychology & Marketing journal, researchers found that customers do not rationally perceive the concept of time. Contrary to expectations, one hour in the morning is not the same as one hour in the afternoon.

This makes the time a customer sends a complaint to a business and the time the business responds to the customer very important—so important that it affects the satisfaction of the customer. In other words, the time of day a business responds to a customer’s complaint can make or break the relationship between the business and the customer. The study was titled, “Good Morning, Sunshine: How Time‐Of‐Day of Complaint Submittal Can Affect Customer Satisfaction with Company Response Time.”

The study found that customers felt more satisfied when they received responses to their complaints in the morning rather than in the afternoon. The truth is that businesses do not receive complaints uniformly throughout the day. Complaints are sent as and when customers feel like sending them.

For a majority of customers, the time they send their complaints would be directly linked to when they get disappointed and when they have the time and the means to complain. If the customer is driving or engaged in some other action, the complaint might be later on. However, depending on how emotionally charged the situation is, customers have been known to stop whatever they were engaged in to complain.

There are some interesting implications of the above-referred study to businesses. For instance, when complaints are received quite late in the day, the best time to respond to them might be immediately, or at best within the hour. The business needs to understand that a customer who might be sending a message late in the day must be under serious pressure. The customer might be tired, anxious, and frustrated that late in the day.

Therefore, the business must respond to the complaint as soon as is practical. It might not be appropriate to wait and respond the next morning. The stress the customer will go through that night before the next morning will be too much. Even if the business will not be in a position to completely solve the problem, it is important to reach out to the customer to assure that customer that all efforts are being expended to solve the problem.

Also if the complaints come late in the day, the customer service professional might be coming to the end of a long day. The one might not be in the right frame of mind to respond in the best way possible to the complaint. A tired employee will be easily irritable and that will not be the best person to respond to an equally anxious customer.

Interestingly, the above-referred study found that customers were more satisfied when they received responses to complaints sent in the morning within an hour of sending the complaint. Their satisfaction levels were less when the responses were received within an hour when the complaints were sent in the afternoon. On the contrary, when responses took 24 hours to arrive for complaints sent in the afternoon, satisfaction levels were higher than when the complaints were sent in the morning.

This could mean that when customers send their complaints in the afternoon, they least expect to receive responses, probably because they believe the time of day they sent the complaint might be late. Therefore, when the responses come through, even in a 24-hour time, they tend to be more satisfied than if they had sent the complaints in the morning.

The study also sought to find out how customer satisfaction with the quality of the company’s response related to the time of day. It was found that when the solution to the complaint was low, customers were more satisfied when that solution came in the morning. Customers were less satisfied when a low-quality response came in the afternoon. The same trend occurred whether the solution to the complaint was medium or even high. So long as the solution came in the morning, customers were much more satisfied than if the solution came in the afternoon.

From the ongoing discussion, it is clear that customer satisfaction has something to do with the time of day that complaints are sent and when responses are provided to these complaints. In an ideal world, there would not be any time lapse between a customer’s complaints and the business’ response. Responses will come in immediately after the complaint is lodged.

As a matter of fact, in an ideal world, there would not be any complaint at all. But we all know that this is far from an ideal world. Customers complain. Businesses respond. There are time gaps between the two. Managing that gap is what differentiates the great businesses from the average businesses. The trick is in knowing one’s customer, understanding the peculiar situation and context of the customer, and responding accordingly.