Using Complaints
Six out of seven customers who should
complain, do not complain. They silently take their business elsewhere and you may never
know it. The one in seven customers that do complain are saying that if only you could
correct the situation, they would like to continue to do business with you. Customer complaints
offer two opportunities. First, an opportunity to satisfy a customer with your positive
response to the complaint, and second, as a readily available source of improvement
requirements that you can use to set objectives for a systematic improvement program.
The first challenge, and a solid
reason you need a systematic complaint management system, is to be able to record all
complaints and not lose the information from (or the opportunity to satisfy) an
existing customer. Many companies have no way to record a verbally received complaint and
usually lose the opportunity to uncover a problem area. Other organizations have no way to
receive any complaint, even a verbal one.
There is a trap here: a low level of
complaints may mean that you do not have an efficient way to receive them - not
necessarily that you are doing well. We have all heard people say that customer
complaints are down, so we must be doing better. The opposite may be true. You are at
least getting ready to do better when you are able to gather more complaints, analyze
them, and then use them for improvement.
OK,
complaints are useful (and even valuable) and more of them may be better than fewer
of them. What do you need to do now? Shaw suggests that a complaint management system, will help you:
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gather more complaints;
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satisfy customers making complaints (and those
who haven't bothered to complain to you, but are thinking of going elsewhere);
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analyze those complaints to identify
improvement opportunities;
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select which complaint categories are priority
improvement opportunities;
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feed these opportunities to improvement
resources, such as cross-functional improvement teams.
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The Shaw complaint management system
has been proven over the last 12 years within complex, service-oriented organizations,
creating relatively inexpensive improvements that show dramatic results in increased
customer satisfaction and cost savings across the board.
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