One of the supposed traits of being British is that we don’t like to complain; it ranks up alongside our love of queuing. Maybe being Scottish I have always felt the need to take a polar view as I have always found constructive complaining to be at least therapeutic and often fruitful. Today, though, I think British people have learned the knack of complaining and are actually becoming pretty good at it.
What organisations really need to focus on this: just as a delighted customer who is an earnest advocate of some product or service generates, through word of mouth, a ‘multiplier’ effect of positivity for the organisation that supplied the product or service, the disenchanted customer can and very likely will do precisely the opposite.
Especially, we might add, in a time such as ours when the media is so powerful and when there are so many consumer programmes about, all
As I write this in the background is a TV programme called ‘Rip Off Britain’ is on, later on in the week is the TV programme ‘That’s Britain’. Both these programmes talk about things people don’t like and largely features people complaining about it. It seems the idea is to inform and maybe it will encourage people to act in a similar way. As a company being seen on these sort of programmes is seldom good publicity!
We have all seen organisations’ spokespeople on consumer programmes and confronted by interviewers who uses the tactic of asking a question and not allowing a measured answer or indeed any sense of perspective to be applied.
The truth is that a wronged customer is not only likely an ex customer but is also, on balance, much more likely to damage you by talking about their experience than a happy customer who often say nothing. I wonder how many times these shows get happy customers ringing in to defend the company that is being discussed on these shows.
It seems to me that what often goes wrong is a misunderstanding between client and provider; either the client expects much more than the provider was offering or the provider fails to honour what the client was right to expect. .
To take an example of the first problem first, a provider offering a £99 holiday in a UK based holiday park maybe you need to be clear that it is unlikely to be sun/sea/sand/etc on a 24/7 basis, and make that clear in your advertising. Many people who book such a holiday know this, and yet advertising seems to ignore that you are staying in fairly old facility and it might rain from time to time. This is precisely the sort of poor communication with customers that can lead to complaints.
To take the second example, a recent coupon offer went badly wrong when advertised cup-cakes from a bakery in Reading were so popular on a national basis that the provider had to massively and unsustainably increase production to meet demand, making a huge financial loss. This is a particularly dramatic case of a retailer not able to cope with justifiable but unrealistic customer demand.
Both these examples demonstrate the importance of proper contracts that make it clear what is offered and the scale of the offer are vital to prevent disputes. In the cases above; maybe show the odd rainy day, or mention that the park is old and under improvement. Similarly if you make cup-cakes in Reading, maybe don’t sell them nationally without a clear understanding of what you are getting into.
Above all, take the trouble to see things sensitively from the customer’s perspective and to imagine how they will feel about a situation if things go wrong.
Sensitive and imaginative: is that too much to ask an organisation to be if it wants to delight its customers and enter the glorious world of running an organisation whose customers love it?
Andy McKenzie
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