Why more complaints can be good

Business Articles | September 9, 2011

Here is a great tip to improve your customer service and complaints handling. As a leader in this field Alison Miles-Jenkins shares her practical ideas to improve your complaints handling and customer. Why not learn from an expert in the field?

Here is a great tip to improve complaints handling, have you tried it yet?

It is tempting to dream of a time when you receive no complaints, a time when your service fits exactly what you customers want, a time when your business is thriving.

But hang on a moment. That moment will also be the time when one of your most valuable sources of feedback has dried up. That in turn may bring with it a loss of customer focus and so your business drifts away from satisfying customers almost by accident.

News this week of many thousands of complaints swamping the banking industry are a wakeup call. Banks have been trying to build up their complaints handling performance. That's a good start, but have they missed the point? If they had been listening to their customers then they would already have had the feedback that they had problems. So they have in effect missed a key chance to solve some root causes and avoid complaints altogether. Those opportunities have been presenting themselves in complaints and feedback over many years. Now, the volumes are so high that even the Ombudsman is struggling to cope.

Imagine for a moment a world where staff seek out complaints or even minor dis-satisfaction from otherwise apparently satisfied customers. They will receive comments such as: "No complaints, your service is great." Well that's fantastic if you feedback. Your staff might also get comments such as: "I wasn't going to mention it, but ...." as if by magic an opportunity to fine tune a product of service follows. That niggle if dealt with and acted upon will make sure that customer service improves.

Imaging if bank staff had asked what their customers thought of the CPI products? For some years they'd be hearing negative comments. In other words they could have solved this problem before it got out of control.

So our key tip is to set a day a week where your employees as customers to complain. Ask them if there is anything that could be improved to make your customer service better. Get the feedback and act upon it. Best of all it is free! You may find the investment of some time here will save you money by reducing your complaints handling costs.

We have some more ideas for you on our website.

Alison

Alison Miles-Jenkins
Training To Achieve

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alison Miles-Jenkins, described as “inspirational and aspirational”, is Managing Director of an award-winning training and management consultancy Training To Achieve which she set up in 1990. Since then, she has been at the forefront of helping individuals, teams and organisations become great at customer service. A staggering 36,000 employees, managers and business owners now perform more successfully as a result of being trained by Alison. She also heads up Reduce Complaints a specialist complaints handling training business.

Alison has developed a specialism in complaints handling and is in demand from those who need some help in handling those tricky customer interactions.