Thank You For Complaining!

Previously, I have written: As a young father, I wanted to do the best job of parenting I could. With the birth of our first daughter in 1980, I began reading the then current literature on parenting. After a few months I settled on the parenting style proposed by Dr. Thomas Gordon in his book Parent Effectiveness Training. It was a win-win approach that did not support punishment or conflict. But Gordon realized that permissiveness, and letting children run wild would create its own set of problems. Parent enforced discipline was a win/lose game that the parent always won. Permissiveness was a win/lose game that the child always won. Neither method was good for children or families. Gordon explained how we could improve our communication with others at any age. How to work together for solutions where both parent and child could win.

This morning one of Gordon’s students introduces a short article from the master.


Joe Wilmot

When’s the last time you jumped with joy when you had to deal with someone’s complaint? Did you get so elated you went around high-fiving everyone in sight? Okay, let’s face it: Most of us absolutely hate dealing with complaints. Dealing with irate customers or colleagues can be unpleasant at best, and sometimes downright painful. But there are ways to make the experience less agonizing and their outcomes more rewarding.

I came up with the idea for this article after a couple of things happened to me. In the first situation I was the customer. I got annoyed at my cell phone carrier because it sends me a text message to announce that I’ve gotten a voice-mail message. The problem is, I already have a little icon that announces voice mail, so this redundancy is unnecessary. I get annoyed because it makes me think I may have a legitimate text message—and I can’t (and won’t) check when I’m driving.

I called my provider to ask them to turn off the extra reminder, but was told it’s not possible. The cheerful and helpful customer service rep told me that many people have made the same request. Knowing that the poor guy is just paid to handle calls, I asked if there was any way he could pass along word from an aggravated customer about it; it’s obvious I’m not the only person affected by this problem. He told me that the only way to complain would be by letter.

“Hmm,” I said to him. “Surely there must be a screen somewhere on your computer where you can type in some notes about this conversation?” No go.

I can understand dealing with a customer service person who hasn’t been trained to listen and acknowledge feelings of dissatisfaction, but here’s a MAJOR global telecommunications company that doesn’t even have a simple system for inputting customer feedback. Arguing with the guy who tried his hardest to be helpful was futile, so I just wished him a great day and hung up. The text message thing is a petty problem, but just how many petty (and not so petty) problems their customers experience this company will never know. That is, unless people sit down and write letters to them. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t written a letter in years.

The other situation happened here at Gordon Training. Someone called trying to order instructor materials that we’d discontinued years ago, and then was aggravated when I told her we no longer have them. I was thinking, “Are we to blame for discontinuing old stuff? Are we in the business of warehousing old stuff just for the few people who’ll want it ten years later? And why should I be blamed for this?”

All of that might be true, but it didn’t take away the fact that I had a caller expressing her feelings about something she’d looked forward to getting. Her behavior clearly signaled: “I have a problem.”

Saving the explanation about what prompted us to discontinue those materials for later—after her feelings had been addressed—I said to her, “Wow, you were really looking forward to getting those workbooks,” and followed it up with, “I can hear your frustration and annoyance.” Empathizing with her didn’t take more than a few moments of my time. She responded: “Yes, I’m frustrated. I was counting on using those materials. What else do you have that I can use?” Without really trying I sold her some of our newer materials and we ended the conversation with cheery good-byes. More importantly, I restored a long-standing relationship.

Do you know how your salespeople or customer service people are dealing with customer gripes? Are they losing you customers and burning out prematurely? The following advice is excerpted from Thomas Gordon’s Sales Effectiveness Training.


Thomas Gordon, PhD

Customer Complaints

One of the main reasons that customers quit doing business with an organization is not faulty products or service but poor handling of complaints. Here are three things to remember about customers who have a complaint:

1. The story will almost always be substantially exaggerated when you first hear it.

2. The faulty product or service is generally not the most important thing in the customer’s mind. What he really wants is to have his complaint heard.

3. The customer has probably incorrectly anticipated what you will say—that you will resist, argue, and so on—and has build a protective wall. Be ready for a barrage of negative replies to almost anything you say.

There are reasons customers are so often on guard and/or upset in communicating their complaints. Perhaps the customer has had a bad day in which other things have gone wrong. Perhaps something totally unrelated to your product or service has gone wrong, and when some minor problem associated with your company comes up, the customer vents all his anger at you. Or perhaps he’s had the same or a similar problem with your company, and doesn’t feel he’s been heard out. He will raise his temper just to make sure he gets his point across this time.

Here’s an idea to remember: an irate customer asking you to look into a problem is one od the best things that can happen. That may sound downright ridiculous at first, but thing about it.

First, the mere fact that the customer is expressing his anger or frustration to you indicates his confidence that you can do something about it. If he sincerely believed you could not or would not help him with his problem, he would not have complained to you in the first place. Even though it may sound negative, he’s really in a hopeful and rather positive frame of mind.

Second, if the customer had no confidence in you and had kept silent about the complaint, there’s a good chance that he would have “gone on down the road” and taken his business to one of your competitors. In addition, research shows he would badmouth your organization to at least twenty other people.

Whenever you hear a complaint from a customer about your company’s products or services, a little red light should flash in your head signaling “Stop, look, and listen.”

Stop what you’re doing.
Look attentively at the customer.
Listen actively to prove your understanding of what the customer is saying.

When you start doing this automatically, you will be amazed at the potency of this approach. First off, it will encourage customers to ventilate all their feelings, get them out of their system. Although initially their anger may be strong, active listening will in time bring about a substantial decrease in the intensity of their feelings. What’s more, sometimes active listening will help shift the subject from the the flashpoint complaint to revealing an “underlying” problem, often the one that is really cause the frustration.

In any case, by using your active listening skill, you will let customers know that you are truly taking in everything they are saying. Psychologists have discovered that when people feel their strongest feelings or opinions are understood, they feel no need to keep repeating themselves, as they will when they are not understood the first time. Through your understanding of the customer’s position, you are more able to help her find an appropriate solution to the problem.


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