Page 16 - A Complaint is a Gift Excerpt

12 a complaint is a gift

chance that customers will talk with us directly. We’d bett er be prepared
to listen.
Th is book speaks to those who deal with customers, those who would
like to benefi t from customer feedback, and those who have the respon-
sibility of retaining dissatisfi ed customers as loyal ones. We suggest that
a fundamental change in att itude is required if businesses are going to
retain complaining customers. If companies get bett er at complaint man-
agement and complaint handling and begin to see complaints as gift s,
they will open clearer lines of communication with customers. Our goal
is to show you how a strategic shift in how you view customer complaints
can be the fi rst step to improve and, indeed, grow your business.

How Th is Book Is Organized

A Complaint Is a Gift is divided into three parts. Th e fi rst part, “Com-
plaints: Lifeline to the Customer,” examines the strategy that will help us
maintain a positive mind-set toward complaining customers. Th is part
establishes the value of listening to customers. Th e role of complaint
handling as a strategic tool for cultivating more business is presented. We
will also consider why most dissatisfi ed customers rarely complain. (Th e
overwhelming majority of them never do, though the Internet may be
impacting that.) We look at what is in the mind of complaining custom-
ers in terms of what they say, do, and want when they are not satisfi ed.
Th e second part, “Putt ing the Complaint Is a Gift Strategy into Prac-
tice,” focuses on how to handle the complaints you do receive. We review
our eight-step Gift Formula for keeping our language, interactions,
and actions consistent with the belief that a complaint is a gift . We’ve
learned a lot about how that formula can be used even more eff ectively.
We also address specifi c suggestions for turning angry customers into
partners. (We stopped calling them terrorist customers aft er September
11, 2001.) Complaint lett ers are discussed as a special category of com-
plaints. When this book was fi rst published, the Web was a forum just
beginning to be available for upset customers. Remember, it wasn’t until
1995 that large numbers of people even began to use the Internet. In the
last ten years, what used to be a whisper can now easily become a global