Page 154 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

73 TRUST YOUR
CUSTOMERS TO HANDLE
THEIR OWN COMPLAINTS

Virtually all firms have some kind of complaint handling
procedure, frequently one that has many rules and constraints
attached to it. The procedures are often time-consuming and
therefore costly, apart from the difficulty of deciding how much
compensation a given complaint should attract, or even whether the
complaint is justified at all.

Most of us are familiar with the scenario in which we don’t offer
the complainant enough and a dispute ensues—sometimes the
result is a lawsuit, but always the result is a lost customer. It is,
in fact, the customers who decide whether the complaint has been
adequately addressed—so why not let the customers decide what
the compensation should be?

The idea

Granite Rock is a company that supplies building materials (mainly
aggregate, concrete, cement, sand, and the like) to construction
companies. The products are fairly homogeneous between firms—
cement is cement is cement, in other words. Granite Rock therefore
had a problem in establishing a unique selling proposition that
would distinguish it from its competitors.

What the company does is unique. It allows customers to handle
their own complaints. On all its invoices is a statement to the effect
that the invoice is what Granite Rock thinks it has earned, but
customers are welcome to pay what they think the company has

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 145