How to Resolve a Customer Service Dispute with a Company

Many companies want to provide quality customer service to their company so that they can have a good reputation in the market place while others do customer service as cheaply as possible and leave much to be desired in their customer service department. You're going to have a dispute with a company at some time in the future and have to talk and negotiate with their customer service department. Here's how to resolve a dispute that you have with a company regardless of how bad their customer service is.

When a company does something to you that you don't like, you have to be your own advocate. You have to be polite and persistent in your actions to make change happen and get a satisfactory response from the company. Make sure that you all of your correspondence with the company is in writing. If you have a phone conversation with them, write down the details of the call, when it happened, how long it was for, who you talked to, what number you called, and what you discussed.

If the company you have a dispute with, a great place to write a letter to is to a couple of the company's officers. You can usually find a means to contact them under a company's investor relations section of their website. If you can make a senior executive, say a vice-president, away of the problem, go ahead and give that person a quick call and let them know about the situation. Often times they'll be quite surprised that their people allowed such a situation to happen and promptly take care of the issue.

Another means of trying to get ad dispute handled is to go to their store or office if they have one in your community. It's a lot easier to say no to somebody in a letter than it is in a person, so explaining your problem to a manager at one of the local stores might go along way in getting your dispute handled.

If a phone call or a complaint on the company's website doesn't seem to work, write a letter to the company detailing the problem and request some sort of action to resolve the issue. If they do not respond to your issue within two weeks, send them a second letter with a copy of the first letter attached. Make sure your letters are written in a positive tone and are as friendly as possible. You are much more likely to get a positive response when you are positive and friendly in your letter.

If you've made the phone calls, done a complaint on their website, and written a couple of letters, try one more time with a letter sent by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the company. If you still don't get any sort of response, you may have to sue the business in small claims court to get the issue resolved. Quite often once they are notified of the suit, they will be very willing to listen and settle the dispute, as it would be much more costly to send a lawyer than just take care of the issue in almost all cases.