Handling Customer Complaints

"Excuse me", I said to the lady at the counter, "I ordered hot chocolate from you a minute ago. The mug's dirty; there's a lipstick mark on it."

She looked at the mug, acknowledges the presence of the lipstick mark, and replied, "I am so sorry. We'll replace it for you. Please take a seat first."

"Excuse me, I have been waiting for 10 minutes..."

Before I could finish my sentence, she interrupted me with an apologetic tone, "Oh, I am so sorry, I forgot about your hot chocolate. I'll make a new one for you now."

A couple of minutes later, the lady came back with a fresh cup of hot chocolate in one hand, and a piece of paper in the other. "We apologize for the dirty mug, and the delay in getting a fresh cup to you. This voucher is for you. You can redeem a drink at any of our Starbucks outlet within 6 months."

This story happened sometime back. I was actually quite impressed with the way Starbucks handled the complaint. What they did to limit the "damage" was appropriate and timely. Any more delays or any less effort in handling the situation would probably lead to an unhappy customer.

Let's look at some interesting information I found about complaints handling (data from an extensive research in the United States).

• A company never hears from 96% of unhappy customers. This means that for every complaint received, 26 more customers are unhappy. Of these 27 unhappy customers, 6 of them have serious problems with the company.
• Half of those who complain will still do business with the same organization if the complaint is resolved.
• Unsolved problems will lead to substantial negative word of mouth. The average customer will tell bad experiences to about 10 person. Those with resolved problems will only tell 5.
• And with the advancement of IT, complaints are taking place in different mediums. More and more people are posting their feedback online, through blogs, forums, and even YouTube. 4% of satisfied customers will post their feedback online, 15% of unsatisfied customers will post online.

What does all these mean?

If you have an unhappy, complaining customer, you better do something about it. A sincere apology appease most unhappy customers; a freebie is likely to win them over. Do something about it before they do something radical.

To end off this blog, I would like to share an interesting insight from a book I read. It says,

"Satisfied customers tell three friends, angry customers tell 3000."

I initially doubt that claim, but I have no more doubts now. Just surf over to this link that I found on YouTube, look at the number of viewers, and you will know why.