A Complaint Is a Gift

A Complaint Is a Gift
By Janelle Barlow & Claus Moller
Jul 6, 2005, 09:18

According to the book "A Complaint Is a Gift: Using Customer Feedback as a Strategic Tool" by Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller, here is what can happen if you don’t effectively handle dissatisfied customers and their complaints...

Customers leave your business dissatisfied and will voice their displeasure to people they know…actually they will tell everyone in sight just what they think.
The business begins to develop a reputation for customer indifference. It does no good to complain because nothing ever happens.
Customers stop complaining and the company loses valuable opportunities to learn how it can improve services or meet customer needs.
Product and service quality are, therefore, not improved, leading to more customer dissatisfaction.
Customers develop a mind-set that product and service quality will be minimal. They will only patronize the business for lower prices.
The staff becomes negative and less motivated. The best employees will leave, thereby depriving the business of their experience and skills.
This in turn leads to more customers leaving the business dissatisfied and telling everyone they know…and the downward cycle starts anew.
Service is an emotional, subjective experience. Two different customers may judge the very same service as either excellent or totally unacceptable.
The way we treat our external customers is directly controlled by the attitude we have for each other within the company...and the two principals of good service involve effectively handling complaints and effective service recovery.
A complaint is a gift.... a way for all organizations to learn something about our products or services we did not know already... a marketing asset, rather than a nuisance of cost.
Most dissatisfied customers never complain (an overwhelming majority never do).
Customers that complain are giving us an opportunity to fix their dissatisfaction. Complaining customers are still talking to us. Customers take the time to complain still have confidence in the organization.

Why is customer feedback important? Remember this widely quoted research fact conducted by the Technical Assistance Research Programs (TARP): When a company receives one complaint, in reality there probably are 27 that are not being expressed. That’s right…26 of 27 people who experience poor service DO NOT COMPLAIN!!

“A Complaint is a Gift” teaches the value of creating a complaint friendly environment and organization. Barlow and Moller show that companies must view complaints as gifts if they are to have loyal customers.