Book Excerpts: A Complaint Is A Gift
Printed with permission from Andrew Gibbons. "Mentoring, Team Leader Development, Management Development Programmes, Customer Service Development"
P 25 "If the frequently cited statistic that 26 out of 27 service customers do not complain when things go wrong is correct, then to get an accurate count of dissatisfied customers, service companies should multiply the number of complaints they receive by 27. One hundred formal complaints equals a potential 2,700 dissatisfied customers in the service industry".
P 26 "If a company's goal is to have fewer complaints this year than last, it is a very easy goal to accomplish. Staff will get the message and simply not report complaints to management. How many times have you delivered a written complaint to the front desk staff of a hotel and wondered if your complaint was passed on to the General Manager?".
P 29 "Some companies conduct customer satisfaction surveys to learn more about hidden complaints . This is a good idea to a point. But who normally participates in such surveys? Existing customers. Unless the company makes a point to ask everyone who used to buy, it is polling only those people who are still buying. These customers are still sufficiently satisfied that they are staying with the company. Company satisfaction surveys are generally not a representative survey of dissatisfied customers. They may give you some ideas, but you need to go after the ones who have left, and find out why they have left. Then the company can find some real gifts".
"People who complain tend not to be typical of the total population with unvoiced complaints".
P 30 "People are far more willing to listen to the advice of a good friend than they are to believe a multi-million pound advertising campaign".
P 33 "The more dissatisfied customers become, the more likely they are to use word of mouth to express their displeasure".
"But if companies make it easy for customers to complain, and handle these complaints, dissatisfaction levels will decrease, negative word of mouth will lessen, and positive word of mouth may be generated".
P 34 "Many companies do not appreciate the real cost of losing customers. They can tell you exactly what they are doing to win customers and how much this costs them, but they do not know how many customers they are losing, why they are being lost, or much this costs them".
P 38 "Dissatisfaction is a more popular topic of conversation than satisfaction".
The above summary has been provided to you compliments of Andrew Gibbons
