A Complaint is a Gift

Bounce back and recover customer loyalty after a bad experience

You want customers talking positively about you spreading the great word of mouth about your store. According to Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller, authors of A Complaint Is a Gift: Recovering Customer Loyalty When Things Go Wrong describe research states a full 25% of positive customer service stories that people tell started out the wrong way or from complaints. The act of converting a complaining customer into a loyal customer is called “Service Recovery”.

This is why that complaints form customers should be seen as gifts, wrapped up for you and your company to act upon. Especially when you consider it is a small minority of customers who have a bad experience will even bother to complain, it is vitally important for you and your staff to value those complaints. One complaint could represent 25 others who experienced the same thing, but didn’t bother to say anything.

So you should make sure that you educate your staff on this and tell them that the next time anyone hears a complaint, the first thing out of their mouth should be “Thank you for bringing that to our attention”.

So you thank your complaining customers? If not, maybe it’s time you start.