Get Them Complaining!

Complaints represent a unique opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customers!

An unhappy customer whose complaint was satisfactorily resolved will tell up to five people about the positive treatment they received.

The fact is that most people dont expect complaints to be handled well, so when you train your team to detonate this potential time bomb at base, you immediately exceed your customers expectations.

Top companies empower their employees to respond at the contact point wherever possible. For example: the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain authorises their staff to deal with any problem at source and to implement or create any customer satisfaction solution that will cost under $2,000.

If the scale of the complaint means that the employee needs to seek counsel with a superior, communication is key. The customer must be kept informed, given a detailed timeline and be told when they can expect a resolution of the issue. Then the challenge is to execute the planned resolution even more efficiently so that you really start building bridges!

I believe that we need to do better than merely solving complaints. We need to be proactive at eliciting them. Remember, 96% of dissatisfied people never complain to you directly but leave anyway! (source: Technical Assistance Research Programme, U.S.A.)

We need to engage in what I describe as reverse selling: extract complaints and ideas from your customers and integrate this feedback into a new product offering and sell your target audience back their product. The customer now has an aspect of ownership in the product and will be much more inclined to buy it. This was the strategy I successfully employed to dramatically increase the turnover in many of the companies I worked for, before setting up my own marketing consultancy in 1990.

Be aware that the current canned attempt that some service organisations use to assess customer feedback is not sufficient. Asking how was your meal? in a lifeless voice with eyes firmly focused on the cash register wont fool anybody! Recently, I ordered a sandwich in a five star hotel to be precise a chicken salad sandwich! The friendly waitress arrived with effectively speaking two slices of ordinary brown bread, a few slices of dry chicken inside and lettuce. The plate was garnished by crisps which were stale. As the waitress was very warm I was in two minds whether or not I should complain. Anyway when she collected the plate she asked me the normal did you enjoy your meal to which I replied in a friendly yet obvious way it was alright. Note you didnt need to be a motivational speaker to work out what I was really saying was It wasnt good enough! She replied thats great and walked away! The following week I decided to email the manager on his second email after the usual programmed attempt to fob me off he said to contact him the next time I was staying and he will ensure that the experienced is much better the next time around! Note I wont be going back there ever and by the way the plain sandwich was 9.80.

Certainly not the Ritz Carlton!

by: Prasad Josh

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