The A-Z of customer complaints in 2026

In CX and service, complaints are a part of life. How a brand handles a complaint doesn’t just make or break the customer’s overall experience and the chance of future retention – reputation is also at stake. On the plus side, effective complaint recovery on the service desk presents an opportunity to repair and strengthen relationships and build loyalty. 

When CX Network conducted its annual research into the state of CX for 2025, as many as 32 percent of respondents said they trained their teams in complaint handling in 2024, and 24 percent said they planned to spend more on complaints resolution, while 44 percent expected their spending to stay the same as the previous year. The research also revealed that 10 percent of respondents were investing in how they manage complaints to support their strategic CX goals for 2025 

Unfortunately, this hasn’t stopped the complaints coming. According to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, 77 percent of customers reported a problem with a product or service in the past year, up from 74 percent in 2023. The research was conducted by Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCMC) and Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and involved 1,000 consumers. 

Drawing on insights from CX experts at Trustpilot, Intradiem, and Ventrica, this article explains how brands can effectively deal with freebie hunters and AI overviews, and explains how complaints handling can be improved. 

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The importance of effective complaint handling

“For many brands, complaint handling is a defining element of customer experience,” says Iain Banks, CEO of omnichannel CX specialists Ventrica. “Getting it right can mean the difference between creating loyal customers or causing them to churn.”

The balance between chatbots and human agents is a common make or break area, Banks says and it is “easy” for organizations to fall into the trap of “over-diverting customer complaints to AI-powered chatbots that offer scripted responses, but don’t always resolve issues”. 

“That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for chatbots in complaints handling; there is - chatbots can take the reins on basic functions, FAQs, and routing customers to the right teams. But there needs to be a careful balance between technology and empathy,” he explains.

One industry that is fine tuning this balance is fast food franchises. “If a customer is complaining about a late order or cold chips, a chatbot will usually be capable of resolving the issue. But for higher risk, emotional complaints like a serious allergic reaction to food, the need for a human agent is critical to ensure an immediate, appropriate reaction,” Banks adds.

However, a broader view shows that an exemplary approach to complaint resolution remains uneven and in some cases rare. 

Jennifer Lee, co-CEO of WFM solution provider Intradiem says: “Most organizations truly intend to provide a fast, seamless experience to their customers, but their systems, staffing models, and sometimes even financial incentives work against them. 

“Agents are often trained to fix or address the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause of complaints. In many cases their hands are truly tied due to the need to follow rigid scripts, meet certain metrics, or escalate in order to get something done for their customer,” she adds. 

This means that, even with the best of intentions, customers often end up feeling “unheard at best, and ignored or even disregarded at worst” Lee says. 

“Where I see stronger performance here is in organizations that treat customer service as a strategic differentiator, versus just a cost center. These organizations invest in systems that give their teams real-time insights and decisioning. They don’t script every single aspect of a call – they trust their agents and empower them to do the right thing, in the moment, for the customer. I wouldn’t say any one industry has this down, it is truly an organization by organization thing versus industry-specific,” Lee continues 

The cost of bad reviews – and poor resolutions  

For the organizations that do struggle with effective resolution, the cost is about more than lost sales.

On how the wider losses can be calculated, Lee says the damage to brand reputation “can quickly spiral from just one mishandled customer service event.”

“For every customer who vocally and explosively leaves, you likely have a large number who ‘quiet quit’ your company for the same reasons. And, studies have shown that customers are much, much more likely to post or talk about a poor experience than a great one,” she says. 

To calculate the direct cost of bad reviews and poor resolutions, Lee says organizations should look at three layers: 

1. Direct revenue loss: Churn, missed upsell opportunities, reduced lifetime value.
2. Operational drag: Repeat contacts, escalations, long handle times, rework, service recovery costs.
3. Reputational impact: Negative reviews, employee burnout, slower long-term growth.

How customer complaints are becoming more complex

How complaints are handled is only part of the equation. Today, there are a number of additional factors, beyond the organization, that further complicate the importance of nipping customer issues in the bud.

Distinguishing genuine complaints from Goodwill Hunters

The first challenge for organizations is to distinguish whether the customer’s complaint is genuine, or an attempt to secure a freebie. 

Banks says: “Distinguishing between a genuine complaint and someone looking for a freebie – we call these individuals ‘Goodwill Hunters’ – all comes down to recognizing patterns. Goodwill Hunters often exhibit repeated behavioral patterns across channels, making frequent and similar complaints. By comparison, genuine complaints tend to be infrequent, sporadic and varied. Genuine customers are also usually interested in resolution over rewards.”

To combat this challenge, Banks advises organizations to harness technology and data. “For instance, a risk engine can be applied to customer complaints, identifying patterns in real-time, analyzing the customer’s profile, and finally making a judgement call on their intentions,” he says. “Repeat email addresses can also be flagged, preventing fraudulent contact attempts.”

This risk engine can be programmed into chatbots, allowing them to autonomously make decisions on whether a customer receives compensation, or it can be used to support human agents. “Supported by these insights, and coupled with their own deep understanding of the brand, human agents can distinguish Goodwill Hunters from the genuine complaints,” Banks says. 

Social media and public reviews 

Customers have the power to amplify their reviews online, whether it is on a vendor’s own website, a review site such as Trustpilot, Google, or their own social media channels 

Review sites and social media platforms can significantly complicate complaints, creating siloed customer interactions and blocking organizations from building complete customer profiles,” Banks says. However, he adds multi-channel interactions are “part and parcel of the modern customer experience.”

The practice of tagging brands in a complaint has become more commonplace, holding them to ransom on a resolution or in some cases forcing a freebie. Banks says that customers who leave public reviews expect “fast and empathetic responses on social media platforms” and that to manage this, brands must build a centralized, omnichannel system capable of managing and tracking complaints across different platforms. 

Another challenging area – particularly for franchises – is third-party delivery apps. “If a complaint is made through this platform, it is ‘owned’ by that app and will not be shared by the franchise itself,” Banks explains. “Nevertheless, the customer still perceives the accountability as being with the brand they ordered from. This highlights a key challenge; the brand reputation is at risk of being damaged, even when the complaint is not visible to them.”

For this reason, Banks says, it is “all the more important to perfect complaints tracking and managing across social media and review sites, allowing franchises to take back as much ownership of their brand perception as possible.” 

AI search and brand reputation  

There’s now a new threat on the horizon:  AI search and overviews, which consolidate all the feedback they can find across the web to paint a highly generalized, one-dimensional view of a brand, which then influences consumers during the critical research journey.  

Alicia Skubick, chief customer officer at Trustpilot says the first thing to understand is that AI search compresses this research journey. “Instead of consumers comparing sources themselves, AI interprets reputation and provides a single, authoritative response. This shifts power to the answer engines – and away from the browser links –  and introduces a new fundamental challenge: people trust the AI summary answer and often don’t look further.”

For brands, Skubick says this can feel problematic because they “can’t always see which sources influence those answers, making it harder to understand what’s shaping perception.”

“However, we at Trustpilot can get under the AI system hood a little bit and see what is driving results,” she says. 

According to Skubick, citations of Trustpilot’s ratings and reviews in ChatGPT answers rose 246 percent between June and August 2025, while Google Search impressions climbed 80 percent year-on-year following the launch of AI Overviews. 

“In trust-anchored industries like finance or loyalty programs, authentic customer feedback is becoming the primary signal of reliability. As AI tools begin making recommendations on behalf of users, transparency and responsiveness become the differentiators. Brands that stay engaged will pull ahead; those that don’t will fall behind,” Skubick adds. 

Skubick offers three key things for CX practitioners to keep in mind: 

1. AI prioritizes online content that offers depth, originality, and human insight. Few data sources provide that better than customer reviews – and Trustpilot reviews are particularly valuable because we put the effort into validating their authenticity. This is what makes them ideal for AI systems that rely on what’s called retrieval-augmented generation and that’s why citations of Trustpilot ratings and review snippets in ChatGPT rose last year. Brands that surface in AI answers are not just producing content, they’re producing clarity for AI queries. When your content is built to answer real customer questions, AI treats it as a teaching resource.
2. AI search can make it harder to correct outdated perceptions if brands aren’t producing fresh, accessible signals. AI systems don’t really know when a company has changed something. They can only reflect the most visible data they can retrieve. Brands that regularly collect reviews and respond to feedback keep their profiles current, increasing the likelihood that AI systems surface an accurate, up-to-date picture. 
3. Companies should treat reputation as infrastructure, not optics. Open, unbiased review data is essential because gated or closed systems don’t help AI assess credibility – because AI can’t access it! Review collections should reflect the full customer journey, including product and support experiences, delivery timelines, and product quality changes. Brands should also respond consistently to their customers to keep their public profiles fresh. 

How to improve complaints handling

On how organizations can manage complains better, Banks offers one piece of advice: “The best way to handle complaints is through focusing on intelligent automation and human empathy, and understanding where the two intersect.”

He says: “Brands must leverage technology to triage and automate complaint handling as much as possible, with real-time insights identifying low-risk, high-volume issues that can be resolved easily. Expert escalation must also be built into this triaging, with high-risk, complex issues immediately being connected to human agents who can manage the situation with empathy and urgency.” 

Crucially, they must also stop viewing customer service as a cost center, “instead seeing it as a strategic growth engine that creates loyal customers”. 

Lee’s career began in the contact center and now, as co-CEO of a major organization she has experience across the entire chain. Asked about the one piece of advice she would give her younger self about handling complaints and diffusing situations, she responds: “Slow down and connect, then fix.” 

“When I was first handling calls, I thought that the best thing I could do was resolve the customer’s issue as quickly as possible. While that is true, I missed a key point, which is that often the customer can’t hear your solution until they feel that you’ve heard them first. 

“When I became a supervisor and began handling escalated calls, I realized that the fastest way to diffuse a tense situation is to truly listen, show genuine empathy (and it has to be genuine), validate the customer’s frustration, and make sure they know you are on their side. Turn it from ‘you versus me’ to ‘us versus the problem’ and everything is smoother after that.”

On how organizations can recover from a poor service journey, she offers a five-step formula: 

1. Acknowledge the issue, and the pain, quickly and clearly: Don’t minimize it, hide it, or defend it. Own what happened and thank the customer for telling you, because that helps build trust between you immediately.
2. Empower frontline employees to actually fix the issue: Give them tools, insights, and (most importantly) decision-making power to resolve the problem - without requiring multiple transfers, approvals, or follow ups.
3. Use this “moment of truth” to demonstrate who you are as a brand: A recovery interaction is often the only, or one of a few, interactions a customer will have directly with your company and your people. Show your values through your actions - respond quickly, with empathy, clarity, and a resolution. 
4. Close the loop internally: A poor service or product experience is almost always the result of a broken process or systemic issue. Don’t just fix the one issue or symptom - ensure you have a feedback loop in place to address the root, so that the issue doesn’t happen again or to others.
5. Follow up! It's simple but powerful: A quick check-in after the issue is resolved, to ask “Did we get this right for you?” shows your customer you don’t just say you care about their experience, you truly DO care. It takes seconds and can have a huge impact. 

Lee adds: “At the end of the day, handling complaints and managing through a poor service experience isn’t about perfection. It’s about human connection, empathy, and accountability to getting it right!”

Quick links

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