Honor Customer Complaints

Honor Customer Complaints

Jeff McLanahan
Contributing Writer
Success Academy

“It’s critical to keep the company’s ‘ear to the ground.’ I know something is wrong if I hear no complaints. Complaints are my assurance that customers want to make an imperfect situation better.” – Anonymous Manager

If you asked your team how many of them like a customer complaint, few, if any, hands would go up.  While we may not like them, we need to honor and value customer complaints.

Research has shown that only 4-6{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} of unhappy customers bother to complain. The other 92 -96{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} simply take their business elsewhere in the private sector or bad mouth and sabotage the organization in the public sector. We also know that an unhappy customer today tells 20 or more other people even when they don’t tell us!

Therefore, it is important to reframe your thinking about complaints. First of all, if only 4-6{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} of your customers take time to complain, they really are your partners because they are helping you learn what is breaking down in your organization. Also, by letting you know their concern, they are giving you an opportunity to fix it and ultimately create a loyal customer.

Another reason to value complaints is that if one customer is complaining and you know that 92{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} of your customers never even bother, you can be pretty sure that more than just this one customer is upset by whatever problem they are bringing to your attention.

Honor customer complaints as opportunities.  Opportunities to learn what is impacting the customers in a negative way and opportunities to create loyal customers by fixing the problem quickly and creatively.

There are a variety of ways to gather feedback from customers.  Several tools are available for low or no cost.  Survey tools are available online and many are free up to a certain number of uses so you can try several out before deciding what to use.

The most effective way to address customer complaints is to minimize the chance of them happening in the first place.  Now we all know that we perform our work in the highest quality manner, but eventually everyone will make a mistake.  When this happens, we want our customer to call us and give us the chance to correct the issue, instead of just calling one of our competitors.

If we have built a relationship with that customer, the chances of them contacting us increase dramatically.  Relationship building opportunities are taught in all of the Direct Energy Services branded core classes.  This training includes topics such as getting on a first-name basis, using your observations to have meaningful conversations with the customer, and much more.  Direct Energy Services Trainers also ensure that our employees practice these skills in the classroom so they are ready to utilize them when they return from training.

Again, when you do receive complaints, instead of griping about the customers who complain, honor them. You might even create a “Complaint of the Month or Week” and then showcase the ways you resolved the complaint to highlight the importance of listening with compassion and concern and finding creative solutions.

Remember, even if unhappy customers are not telling you, they are telling everyone else!

Jeff McLanahan is a seasoned training executive with more than 20 years of proven success with some of the most well-known and highly respected franchise brand.  In June 2013, Jeff joined Direct Energy Home Services as the Vice President of Training for Success Academy, the exclusive training partner for the Direct Energy Home Services branded businesses including One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning, Benjamin Franklin – The Punctual Plumber, and Mister Sparky – America’s On Time Electrician. Success Academy, supporting the home services brands of Direct Energy.