A Complaint Is A Gift

Key Thoughts:

2009 is the year we get serious about actively managing our customer experience. This updated book by Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller was a very exciting read.

The book detailed tonnes of knowledge of why customer feel/react the way they do, each point backed by scientific research. In addition, great stories of service recovery helps emphasize the points and helps reinforce it (besides being a good read! As the authors alluded, complaints are far more entertaining to hear/read than good service).

The most stand out thing I learned from the book is 'Complaining customers are often the loyal customers, disloyal customers are more likely to not say anything and into the arms of your competitors'. I have used this phrase to good effect the last two weeks.

The gist of the book as described in the Foreword by Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com is our loyalty to a company is influenced by how someone at that company respond or didn't respond to our complaints or service issues.

Short Summary:

The book is organized into 3 sections (taken from Introduction).

1. Complaints: Lifeline to the Customer - outlines strategy that will help maintain a positive mind-set toward complaining customers. It emphasis the value of listening to customers, using the opportunistic encounter to cultivating more business, talks about why most dissatisfied customers rarely complain. Finally, it talks about what's on the mind of the customer when he/she complains.

2. Putting the Complaint Is a Gift Strategy into Practice - focuses on how to handle the complaints you do receive. There's an Eight-Step Formula (outlined below). How to deal with the Internet phenomenon in terms of customers airing their dissatisfaction directly to the world and use the Web to our own advantage.

Eight-Step Gift Formula

1. Say, "Thank you."

2. Explain why you appreciate the feedback.

3. Apologize for the mistake.

4. Promise to do something about the problem immediately. Take responsibility.

5. Ask for necessary information.

6. Correct the mistake - promptly.

7. Check customer satisfaction.

8. Prevent future mistakes.

3. Dishing It Out and Taking It In: The Personal Side of Complaints - apparently applying to your personal life can save marriages! Common strategies includes listening to their complaints, learn to notice when 'someone is upset and to respond in a way to leads to resolving the conflict'.

'You can't take your girlfriend for granted, and you can't take your customer for granted. Every time, it always works out the same way. Somebody else gets them' Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines.

As mentioned earlier, many good examples were presented. 'Ideas that are almost sure to work are the best practices of other companies in your industry. But the breakthrough ideas often come from outside, from an industry that routinely solves a problem that's new to you.' Wally Bock

My Comments:

An excellent resource from TMI as usual. As in keeping with anything worth it's place in the marketplace, plenty of additional materials are available on the website. www.tmius.com

I am re-reading the book the second time starting this week, so more detail summary may be posted in a later post. In the meantime, the book is in the Finance Library. I'm also going to propose a daily briefing sheet for each Pillar for Daily Stand Up Meeting (as mentioned last week in our monthly meeting), expect to see materials presented in this book to be on the briefing sheet.

Reference: A Complaint Is A Gift: Recovering Customer Loyalty When Things Go Wrong, Janelle Barlow & Claus Moller, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.