‘Tis the Season to Be Giving, But Is a Complaint Really a Gift?

Early in my career in quality, I was introduced to the notion that a complaint was a gift. The concept was that only by knowing what brought dissatisfaction to customers could one perform customer service recovery and restore the relationship to one of loyalty.  I can tell you there were many times when I would have gladly returned the “gift” to stop dealing with complaints.

At the risk of stepping on Harry Hertz’s esteemed toes (he of the Baldrige Cheermudgeon fame) by writing on this topic, I fear I must.  Several recent experiences have confirmed my long-held belief that most organizations and most leaders don’t want to receive complaints, and they certainly don’t want to address the underlying causes of the defective product or service to prevent a recurrence.

Sometimes service and products fail to meet expectations

Last holiday season, I ordered a gift for my husband on December 15, 2021. I kept tracking the notices that it had been shipped and soon would be delivered. I guess I had failed to confirm which year it was intended to arrive.  Several unanswered emails and several months later, after posting my frustration on social media, I received a response.  I was required to provide all of the information that I had previously provided (several times) only to finally be told sometime in June 2022 that the package had been lost in the shipment (despite tracking notices to the contrary), and the product was now on backorder. Fast forward a few more months, and he received the package in mid-October.  No customer courtesy was extended to compensate for the abysmal service and lack of earlier responses.

More recently, a few months ago I ordered a kitchen item from a well-known manufacturer of these and other household products. I had bought from this company many times in the past and had experienced one exemplary scenario of customer service recovery, so I was confident that this product would meet my needs and arrive in a timely manner.  The box store where I ordered the product did, indeed, deliver it in a timely manner, but it arrived with a noticeable defect.  Rather than deal with the big box store with whom I’ve had several unpleasant and unproductive encounters, I attempted to approach the manufacturer directly.  Emails to their “contact us” information on their website remained unanswered.  Again, I sought a solution through a complaint posted on social media.  That post brought a flurry of activity, a request for a photo of the defect, and a prompt promise of a replacement product shipped at no charge.  I praised them profusely on the same social media and was delighted to receive the replacement within days.

Determine and remove the root cause of defects

Alas, my joy was short-lived.  Within two days after receipt, the replacement product failed in the exact same manner as the original.  Once again, I tried the “contact us” approach on their website but received a canned response saying that “due to an unusually high volume of complaints,” (now there’s a red flag for you!) their customer support staff was unable to respond in a timely manner and that I should be patient.  Nope, back to social media I went.  This time, I had to again provide photos of the identical defect but was instructed NOT to return the defective product.  A no-charge replacement was then shipped out, and so far, it’s working as promised.

However, the quality leader in me wonders if this manufacturer will ever identify the true root cause(s) of the defect without a thorough investigation – a poor engineering design, a process failure in the manufacture and/or assembly, or an incompetent supplier?  Given the delay in the defect’s appearance in the second product, even additional final inspection is unlikely to detect and segregate the good from the bad products.

Effective complaint recovery can increase customer loyalty

One of the things that I learned in my career was that leadership is crucial for both effective customer service and ease of access to make complaints that leads to customer loyalty and engagement.  Your tech support and customer service employees need proper training; they need internal processes that work for them to quickly resolve customer issues; and they need to know how to receive and respond to a complaint – and these are often employees who aren’t “officially” part of the customer service department.   Your customers must find it easy to give you actionable feedback.  If complaints are truly a gift, then one that is constructively given should be responded to with genuine appreciation and an explanation of next steps until recovery is complete and satisfactory.

I know this can be difficult conducted in a positive manner when the customer is exceptionally negative and abrasive.  However, in many cases, a little bit of empathy can go a long way toward building a collaborative process for resolution.  This is particularly true in health care when many of the people who are complaining are in pain, are scared, or are frustrated by not understanding how the system works.

Your role as a leader
For complaints to really be gifts, you need to listen to them, evaluate the feedback, and take appropriate action.  Deal with both the complaint as well as improve the relevant processes.  As in all things important in organizations, senior leaders’ personal actions set the stage for how employees’ behavior.   As a leader, how do you respond when your own employees voice complaints to you?  Are you abrupt, defensive, or quick to blame the squeaky wheel?  There’s a very telling question in the companion Baldrige surveys of “Are We Making Progress As Leaders?” https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/self-assessing/improvement-tools/are-we-making-progress-leaders and “Are We Making Progress?” (for employees) https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/self-assessing/improvement-tools/are-we-making-progress. The question is, “Our organization removes things that get in the way of progress,” with a Likert scale for responses.  Having used both surveys in multiple organizations, I find this to frequently be one of the lowest-scoring questions, with a large gap between leaders’ perceptions of how they are doing versus employees’ perceptions of how leaders remove – or don’t — barriers to performance.
‘Tis the season to be giving – and receiving.  How are you ensuring a culture that values complaints as well as compliments to drive improvement?
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