How can handling customers’ complaints make freight forwarding companies resilient to future challenges?

Abstract

It is unquestionably impossible to separate the complexity of freight forwarding tasks in managing export-import documents from the issues that lead to customers' complaints. For this reason, this study is conducted to deeply investigate the forms of customer complaints at freight forwarding companies, the complaints handling strategies used, as well as explore the service recovery generated after complaints. It involved four freight forwarding companies in DKI Jakarta province. The staff who handled customer complaints from each company was asked to fill out a complaint sheet whenever the complaints were addressed for two weeks. Interviews with each staff were conducted to confirm data from the sheet and also to further explore the company’s complaint-handling strategy and service recovery. The data were analyzed descriptively by reading the complaints sheets and the interview transcription several times, coding the emergent themes, and categorizing them. The results showed that the customers’ complaints belong to four categories, namely complaints related to time, documents, costs, and means of transportation. The strategy for handling customer complaints varied based on the media used to address complaints. The strategy for handling complaints addressed orally via a phone call was apologizing, finding out the source of the problems, as well as giving explanations and solutions. However, complaints addressed in written form via email and WhatsApp messages were handled by directly addressing the problem and then informing the customer. This research indicated that companies need to make continuous service recovery by improving problematic side areas in order to increase customer retention.