Don’t Avoid Customer Complaints. Manage Them.

Complaint Avoidance

It is typical that most companies want to create a customer service experience that doesn’t encourage customer complaints. Well, it’s not a matter of if the customer will ever have a complaint. It’s when the customer complains. Furthermore, the concept of complaint avoidance isn’t about trying to be perfect and never having a customer complaint. For the purpose of this lesson, it’s about avoiding reality. In other words, it’s about turning your head from mistakes, problems and complaints – acting as if they aren’t there.

Two Types of Complaint Avoidance

The first is a potential complaint. This is a complaint that hasn’t yet happened.  It’s there, just waiting to be discovered. You know about it, but choose to look the other way away and, for whatever reason, you don’t deal with it. It could be due to fear, laziness or apathy. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. Avoiding the problem doesn’t make it go away. Instead, you must seize this as an opportunity to step up and fix the problem before it becomes a complaint. You may have noticed a glitch or problem in your system. It may be an error on a report. It may be that you found out that your customer’s shipment won’t arrive on the date promised. Regardless of whatever the problem may be, rather than avoid it, manage it. Determine the issue, how it happened and what you can do to fix it. Communication becomes important. Be proactive. If there is a customer that needs to be informed, then inform them before they inform you. And by the way, that includes your internal customers as well. They depend on your good work, just as the customer does.

The second is simply avoiding the customer’s complaints. Dodging phone calls or not responding to emails and hoping that the customer will just stop complaining and go away. Not dealing with the complaint may escalate the situation to become worse than it is. And, in some cases, the customer may actually stop complaining. They may even go away… permanently. I’m not a psychologist, but I believe this is considered passive-aggressive behavior, aggressively deciding to passively avoid the issue.

In either situation, the reality is that there is a problem. It has either the potential to become a complaint or already is a complaint. Either way, it must be dealt with.

Three simple thoughts about managing versus avoiding customer complaints:

1. Be proactive. Deal with a potential problem or complaint as quickly as possible.
2. It may or may not be your fault. Either way, you must demonstrate an attitude of accountability, so choose to own it.
3. Don’t just fix the problem. In the process, work to restore confidence. Prove that the customer made the right decision to do business with you.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.

(Copyright ©MMXIV, Shep Hyken)