How to handle customer complaints?

Customer complaints, whether coming from profitable or unprofitable customers, is something universal to all consumer businesses, which can concern any department of a firm. The better replacement for customer complaints is customer feedback, which no sane organization can ignore, in fact all organizations depend upon it to judge their own performance and to improve, simple as truth. Handling complains can become very unprofitable, and the art of handling the complains and unprofitably that comes along it is one of the basics of marketing know-how. One of world's top marketers, John Quelch, offers some guidelines "for expediting the complaint process and keeping customers happy":

• "Understand the full context. Try to understand as much as you can about the complaint. The more information you have, the easier it is to determine the root of the dissatisfaction.
• Propose a resolution. Know what would make the situation better for your customer and propose ways you can solve the problem.
• Show respect. Complaining customers are often upset. Train employees receiving complaints to be empathetic and to reframe the harsh criticism they may receive into constructive feedback."*

From this guidelines it's clear that no matter if the customer burst with anger, the employee(r) should return the rudeness not with rudeness but with smile and respect. I have seen this many times when an angry customer or person would talk rudely to my father, and how he won their hearts, forming deep, enduring relations with them. It all happens in a spur of a moment, and those few seconds are crucial. When we keep in our sub-conscious mind that context needs to be understood at all costs, our reactions would be better, making us more and more empathetic towards our customers.

(* From Management Tip of the day, DECEMBER 2, 2009.)

Fun lies in criticisms :)

Today's Reflection:

All the criticisms, be them negative or positive, are gifts to me. But, in fact, there is no aspect of negativity in critical comments. The only condition is honesty. I believe that even if someone gets a criticism too harsh and seemingly vindictive, it is not so. Even so it remains a gift for we, who are committed to be 'learners Forever', should always be seeking pleasure in taking and accepting them, instead of fruitlessly justifying our ways. According to Sufis, our self or nafs abhors criticism that is directed towards oneself. And it is not a Sufi truth, but truth in general.

Last year when we presented our Life Thinking Paper in class, each student gave a comment on others LTP. When going through criticisms put on my LTP, I tried to surpass my commotions, which are reactions to 'criticisms'. I felt a positive change in my thought-patterns. The mistakes I couldn't detect were detected by my classmates. Value criticisms friends, value them.

You can become a victim of hindsight and mistakes, and that happens in real life too often. You are fortunate to have a group of persons, with whom you've deep personal relations who counsel you, point out your mistakes and provide you with refreshing insights, may them be your parents, friends, mentors, or teachers, or anyone else. You are fortunate, because one of the best ways of avoiding hindsight and mistakes is by receiving counsels from people with whom we've emotional bonds. Social networking therefore must be based on the idea of emotions, nearness and openness. Only then we can have authentic and honest opinions and counsels, to capitalize on. (This idea is derived from a seminal kind of HBR article on authentic leadership.)

Nonetheless, if you can't do away with it. See below.

It's useless to fear failure. failures tou achay hotay hain!

I couldn't learn accounting, i wasn't making any growth, i noticed. And pondered, why? Another thing i noticed was that whenever i attempted to solve a long, brain drying accounting case/question, i was too much overwhelmed by the fear of failure. Then i reflected: "Do i easily learn any other subject i am good at without initially failing at it?" Answer was in negative. There's a hindsight in it for the people of understanding, well described by today's Management Tip of the Day. It says:

"We spend a lot of time and energy at work trying not to fail. However, most people describe their failures as an important part of learning and growing. Adapt a growth mindset and accept that failure is part of the process of skill development. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they're learning, not just when they're succeeding. Don't limit yourself to doing things that you know you can do — you won't grow that way. Instead, try things that are above your ability, set high goals that you aren't sure you can reach. You might surprise yourself and succeed — and if you don't, you'll learn something new."

Learning is our "categorical imperative". (But don't make a habit of having too many categorical imperatives, though.)

Changing behaviour by changing yourself? Not the easiest way of doing a great job!

Change "outside" to change "inside".

Why do some people eat all the day long? In America some time ago people had 3 meals a day, now they snack anytime. Is it because of hunger? Not very likely, although it does not seem to be. Just as Peter Beger suggests, "read a little bit of Brian Wansink's book Mindless Eating to realize just how much our actions are determined by our environment." Let's return to the question of eating habit, Brian found that:

"...the reasons we eat have little to do with hunger and a tremendous amount
to do with the subtle cues that drive us. For example, if you use a big spoon,
you'll eat more. If you serve yourself on a big plate, you'll eat more. If you
move the small bowl of chocolates on your desk six feet away you'll eat half as
much. If you eat chicken wings and remove the bones from the table, you'll
forget how much you ate and you'll eat more. If you have a bowl of soup that
never gets less than half full, you'll eat more. And the more people you eat
with, the more you'll eat."

How many habits of yours, some of which you might be obsessed with and want to get rid of, are shaped by your choices and decisions, and not by the environment around? Not many! (You can debate a lot against this paradigm which however doesnot seek to reduce human ability to change, rather addresses it, as in the coming lines.) So let's not just pity ourselves, and be receptive about the condition we are living in, of course this calls for 'being proactive' and creating a change - this time in the "outside". This has great implications not only for us as normal human beings but as well for marketers, spiritual teachers, and a lot of other people.

Just to quote a small example Berger gives on the 'efficiency' of marketers, consider this:

"Marketers already know this. It's why you get so many catalogs over the
year. Of course you could go to their website to shop. Or just use the catalog
you already have on the counter. But no, they'll send you another one two weeks
before Valentine's Day. Or Halloween. Or Christmas. They know when you're
thinking about buying something and they'll make sure that, just as you have
that thought, hey look, a catalog."

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