Customer complaints are golden
December 1, 2006 by jim
Hard to believe, that the person complaining to you about your product or service is the best thing that can happened to you. Facing a client who is upset with your business is difficult. Because it is your business it can be doubly upsetting because you will probably take it personally. That is great. When they are done remember to say thank you. And, mean it.
Complaints are gold because you get so few of them. Studies reveal that only 1 in 10 customers who want to complain do. On the Internet it’s 1 in 100. There is a big difference between the people who complain and those who don’t. That difference is that those who say something about the short comings of your product or service want you to do better. The others want you to fail.
People who don’t complain to you will complain to their friends, family and total strangers. They will not give you a chance to fix the problem that they see. They destroy your reputation and you don’t have a chance to respond. They are out to get you. It happens at all levels.
Back in the late ‘70’s I worked with a large international company and we had a client who was also a large international company. Well one weekend a low level clerk exceeded her authority and messed up our client. The damage control effort was massive and the client’s people smiled. Unknown to us a senior vice-president of our client’s had told his people to replace us, but never tell us on pain of immediate termination. One day, about a year later, a letter arrived in the mail from their lawyer informing us that our contract would not be renewed. They had replaced us with a competitor and we never had a clue. It wasn’t my account.
I know for a fact that our executives would have given that client anything they wanted to keep the relationship, but not only did the client decided not to do business with us any more they wanted to screw us. They were a dream to deal with that last year, but we didn’t learn anything that we could do to save their business. Their complaints would have given us information we might have used to save the relationship.When you throw on top the fact that it is 1,000 times more expensive to get a new client than to keep an existing one our loss is even more devastating.
The big lesson here is that if someone complains to you treat it like the gift it is. How do you handle it?
- Remain calm and business like.
- You must take ownership of the situation.
- You take the responsibility to respond to the customer. You may not be able to solve their problem, but you own the situation so that they understand that someone is taking their feelings seriously.
- Acknowledge that the customer is upset. (“I can see that you are upset. Please tell me about it.)
- Stop and listen to the person. Do not speak. Give them your undivided attention. Take notes if you must.
- When they are completely finish rephrase their statements and ask “Is that what you mean?”
- If you cannot solve the problem immediately then get contact information so that you can follow up.
- Ask “Is there anything else that I can do to help you?”
- Finally and most importantly follow up, because you own the situation.
We learn more from our failures than our successes. A customer complaint is your boss’s expression of a perceived failure. If you do not learn from it then it becomes a real failure.
Major props on this. Bill Gates says something similar. I’ve followed on with my own rant at Marketing Canapes.
Jim:
Great points, and an important reminder of the value of customer complaints. I’m going to post a link to this entry from my franchisormarketing.com site to remind those who run franchise companies (our readership) that the principles you preach are also applicable to “internal customers” such as franchisees, managers, and other team members. Complaints are often ways of identifying areas for improvement that would otherwise keep eating away at efficiency and morale.
Excellent post. Earlier this week I wrote about an excellent book on the same topic.
http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/customer-service/10783-1.html?postId=008300
Regards,
Glenn
Thanks for reading.
Jim
If your franchise owner claims that there is a problem with a client of yours. Should, they give you a copy of an email received by them or a writing complain giving fundation to their say so.
If your franchise owner claims that there is a problem with a client of yours. Should, they give you a copy of an email received by them…
In most cases, yes. If it’s your responsibility to solve the problem, you should get a copy of the complaint.
However, without knowing the specifics, it’s impossible to say. Did the client send the complaint in confidence to the franchisor? Does the franchisor fear your response/reprisal?
There must be a reason they’re withholding it. If they wanted to make it up, they would have said they got the complaint by phone.