| How many complaints did
your company receive last month? What was making your customers unhappy? Was it a
widespread problem? What did it cost you in lost business? If you don't know the answers
to these questions, you are missing out on an improvement strategy that delivers a return
on investment that will surprise you-a Manage Complaint System. A Manage Complaint System
costs little or nothing to implement, and it provides the most accurate and timely
information available about what needs improving in your company. Complaints are
intelligence from the real world of your company's day-to-day business, red flags marking
issues that may be impairing your performance and image. By managing your complaints
systematically, you can leverage them to improve your business in ways that help you gain,
serve, and keep customers. You may even save money. One manufacturing plant used their
Manage Complaint System to uncover problems with internal procedures that were causing
customers to hold back on paying their bills and reduced the accounts receivable balance
by $5 million. Learn to Love
Complaints
Only one in seven customers who could complain actually do. This customer is telling you
that he or she would like to continue to do business with you if only you would correct
this problem. The other six may be silently taking their business elsewhere. A Manage
Complaint System can help you retain those six customers and pinpoint changes that could
attract new ones. Complaints are event-driven, "moments of truth" in the
interactions between your company and your customers. The customer information you receive
at these times is a good deal more accurate than responses to customer satisfaction
surveys, which many companies rely on for such information. For one thing, customer
satisfaction surveys use questions that come from the survey firm not the customer. For
another, they measure states of mind, which are inherently unstable and temporary. A
complaint, on the other hand, is a customer behavior, an action. It comes straight from
the customer to you, and is a much more reliable indicator of customer perceptions about
the value they are receiving from your company. And not only is the information the most
accurate available, it is also the most timely, delivered on the spot or close to the
event. This timeliness is especially important today, in a marketplace increasingly on
"Internet time."
Turn Your Complaints into an Information
System
A systematic approach to complaints is essential to a payoff. A Manage Complaint System
should meet three goals. · Capture all complaints. To accomplish this, you can train all
customer-contact employees to actively solicit complaints (and compliments). This provides
the customer with multiple entry points for complaints rather than the usual single
gateway of the Customer Service Department. A toll-free hotline is another way to make it
easy for customers to complain. · Quickly resolve complaints to the customer's
satisfaction. To meet this goal, you need to establish a step-by-step procedure with
built-in accountability for employees to follow. The communication of the complaint to the
appropriate person or team, its investigation, resolution, and follow-up can be mapped on
a flow chart with cycle time targets at designated control points. · Identify root causes
of complaints and make changes to prevent recurrence. By analyzing each complaint in the
context of the bigger picture of your company's business processes, identifying the cause
of the problem, and then making changes in the appropriate process to result in permanent
improvements, you're not just satisfying one customer's complaint, you're satisfying all
your customers. A complaint may even trigger improvements that delight your customer, a
strategy that can end up attracting new customers, as well.
Double or Triple Your Complaints
If someone were to say to you, let me help you double or triple your complaints, what
would be your reaction? Chances are, you'd hesitate. Complaints have a negative
connotation for most people. But no one is perfect, and once we admit fallibility, we gain
an advantage because then we are willing to make changes. Increasing the number of
complaints you collect does not mean deliberately lowering quality but vacuuming up
customer problems that already exist. Very often, the first step in establishing a Manage
Complaints System is changing the company culture regarding complaints, beginning with the
philosophy of top management. How do your executives regard complaints? As a pain in the
neck? Or as a golden opportunity to improve your company's business? The second choice
will put you on the track of a buried treasure that can enrich your customer's experience
and your company's performance.
James G. Shaw, M.B.A., is two-decade veteran of
Silicon Valley's high technology industry. He is founder and President of Shaw Resources, whose mission is to provide methodologies and associated tools that enable
executives and key managers in all types of organizations to initiate and lead
organizational performance improvement initiatives. Shaw Resources is the holder of the
only U.S. patent ever granted for improving organizational quality. Mr. Shaw is a
five-year member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
where he served as a senior examiner. Currently, he is responsible for the judging process
for California's Governor's Award. Mr. Shaw may be contacted via telephone at
1-888-ShawRes (742-9737) or via email at Jim@ShawResources.com or via the web site http://www.ShawResources.com.
| Copyright © Shaw Resources, 2006, all rights reserved.
(888-SHAWRES), email: Info@ShawResources.com; www.ShawResources.com. You may reproduce this
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each copy produced. |
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