If you put one pot of boiling water and another pot of lukewarm water into your freezer at the same time, guess what happens? The boiling water will freeze first! This phenomenon has been known since the time of Aristotle, but apparently even today no one understands precisely why it happens.
Similar to freezing a pot of boiling water, companies can often turn their biggest complainers into raving fans, who are even more convinced in their positive views than other, more satisfied customers are. And this is a phenomenon that isn’t so hard to explain.
While increased globalisation and rising levels of contact are clearly raising customer expectations in general, a complainer is someone whose expectations are heading downwards. If you feel a company has wronged you in some way, then you’ll be examining every new interaction with it for evidence to confirm this belief. As a result, something that might have begun as a simple mistake by someone in the firm, could soon be interpreted by the complainer as bad intentions on the company’s part. And bad intentions lead to a serious breach of trust.
The trust a customer has in you reflects not just the customer’s own independent opinion, but also how the customer’s friends evaluate you. Even a single complainer’s dissatisfaction and distrust can soon infect a large number of others. So complainers, if left to their own devices, can do serious damage to your company.
However, the fact that a complainer has already developed a particular point of view means that as soon as the company does something to contradict that point of view, for example handling the complaint proactively, its action has the potential to completely reverse the customer’s mindset, challenging the customer’s expectations once again, but this time in a positive manner. The more a business contradicts the customer’s own pessimistic expectations, the more noticeable and memorable its initiative will be. When done right, like the boiling pot of water that freezes faster, a boiling complainer will often become a highly convinced company advocate even faster than someone who never had a complaint to begin with.
What this means for your company is that complaints, once received can benefit your bottom line. So when your company is fortunate enough to hear a complaint from a customer, you should follow five simple actions:
Acknowledge: Always begin by acknowledging the complaint and the complainer. Whether or not you think a complaint has merit, you have to start by granting the legitimacy of the complainer’s point of view
Apologise: There’s no substitute for simply saying “we’re sorry.” No ifs, ands, or buts–just plain old “sorry for this.” As the complainer tells you what’s wrong from his or her perspective, genuinely apologise early and often.
Amplify: Probe for additional information about the complaint, keep asking if there is anything more, any further dissatisfaction that has not yet been voiced. Get it all out.
Ask: Once the problem has been fully exposed you should ask the single most important question: What does the customer think would be a fair and satisfactory resolution?
Act: Then, if it’s at all possible, do what the customer has just told you would be fair.
