Embrace Your Customer’s Complaints
Delivery of high quality customer service is, in truth only as complicated as, we the deliverers make it. And my, don’t we often make it complicated..
It sounds so obvious, but then so does much of what
have often seemed so innovative over the last 20 years I have worked in
Customer service and contact centres. The truth is there are very few new
ideas out there.
I have spent many years working in large blue chip organisation, in
industries such as mobile telecoms, IT support, internet service provision
and even Charity. In all cases I have never failed to be amazed by the many
obstacles that these businesses will put in the way of satisfying their very
life blood, THE CUSTOMER.
These obstacles come in many shapes and guises. There are systems,
processes, policy and cost to name but a few. However the most frequently
experienced is, the opinion that we as providers know what our customers
want, better than they do.
Of course we invest in unending supplies of market research and customer and
industry insight data. All of which delivers ever more granular
understanding of the perfect product and service for each demographic and
sector. This is certainly useful information and should be used to help
shape our business. But there is a free and truly insightful way of
discovering what our customers want, and it comes from the cheapest and best
source of all. LISTEN TO HIM.
I recently suggested to a director of a FTSE 100 company that customer
complaints should be embraced and indeed encouraged. The director’s reaction
was one of derision. “Encourage complaints. I’ve got enough of them without
encouraging them” they responded. This person was clear which area of their
operation was responsible for the recent poor customer satisfaction
statistics and was already devising a plan to overhaul the function in
question.
In truth it may well be that the targeted function has failings, but so
equally may others, and whilst busily creating steering groups and project
teams to create the perfect customer service operation, the customer is
simply frustrated that they don’t know what is happening with their own
simple issue which they took the time to go into writing about.
Back in 1990 Feargal Quinn, founder of “Superquinn” one of Irelands largest
supermarket chains wrote in his book “Crowning the customer” of the need to
embrace the customers views by recognising the importance of each complaint.
Apologise, mean it, understand the reason for the failing, don’t make
excuses, fix it for the customer and make it different for the next
customer. As I said there are no new ideas.
More recently, Gordon Ramsey, celebrity chef, TV personality and Founder of
the phenomenally successful “Gordon Ramsey Holdings” states in his book
“Playing with fire”, that early in his career he treated complaints with
contempt, and letters “went in the bin as appropriate testimony to the
writer’s credentials”. This continued until his partner and father in law
Chris Hutcheson pointed out that he was in fact “binning the most valuable
management tool in the chest”.
Ramsey goes on to extol the virtues of wowing a dissatisfied customer. Of
course we all know that a complaint corrected can often result in a strong
and vocal advocate for your business. It remains a mystery why so few
companies build on this incredible opportunity both to learn and to gain the
valuable free advertising that is “word of mouth”.
As my own example, my wife and I cruised on the Cunard Liner QM2 for our
honeymoon. Of course everyone we knew was told of the fabulous trip we were
due to take and was keen to ask what it was like on our return.
The truth was that the trip was amazing. Fantastic surroundings, great
entertainment incredible food and terrific cocktails made a superb
honeymoon. However the story they got was of a calamitous disembarkation in
New York and an inaccurate report of a rejected credit card.
I wrote to Cunard. The response was courteous, personal and apologetic. A
customer service executive called Peter Moss made no excuses, he simply
empathised, apologised and sympathised that this was clearly not the way a
honeymoon should be remembered. Mr Moss, offered a substantial compensatory
discount from a future voyage with Cunard, to “Allow them to demonstrate
their true high standards”
The result is that my wife and I will sail again next year and all I tell
people is how great the trip was and how well they dealt with a couple of
minor errors. The Cunard investment in me has been more than covered.
However, one word of warning must follow. I have worked in a number of
leading brand organisations. They invest millions protecting that brand and
nurturing loyalty from customers. But amazingly many of these companies
jeopardise this work by taking a small sample of insight data, market
research or complaints and looking to make “knee jerk” changes to their
operation. Often these result in further changes, convinced that the first
steps have not resulted in the required result. Drawing an analogy form the
Cunard story. It takes time to turn a ship, it is important to allow the
change to take affect before turning again.
In short embrace your customer’s complaints but as a previous senior
colleague frequently remarked, make you plan strategic not tactical.
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