Any of us who are in experience work - whether we call our work User Experience or Customer Experience - have spent time listening to or reading customer complaints. We do it to learn what our customers expect, what they’re hoping, and to learn where the biggest pain points are. Sometimes we do it because the Big Boss (or the Big Boss’s mother-in-law) is one of those complainers and we’ve got to make some changes fast.
Complaints run the gamut - but they’re usually about things that don’t work. We get complaints about expectations that weren't met, complaints about things that just go wrong, complaints about things that weren’t designed to do what the customer expects in the first place!
Many of us regard those complaints as a nuisance. We want to categorize them, but we don’t want to deal with them. We don’t want to smooth things over. We just want those customers to go away -- and believe me -- those customers know that’s what we’re thinking.
And that’s why, so often, they leave for another brand.
I’d like to propose a new approach to these squeaky wheels.
What if we regarded our biggest complainers as our most valuable customers?
Think about it. Why do people complain? Because they hoped for something they didn’t get.
Why do people have hopes for a business interaction? Because they have faith in a brand - and they have expectations of the brand. They were expecting us to get it RIGHT!
They had high expectations, and those expectations weren’t met. They’re disappointed, sometimes bitterly so (depending on their length of relationship with our company or brand). We know this happens all the time - and is more often the norm rather than the exception. So what’s the big deal?
When customers are disappointed on many fronts by many businesses, they feel even stronger the failure of a trusted brand to deliver.
Thing is, these big complainers - they’re probably from among our biggest fans.
These are the folks that have high expectations for the company -- perhaps because they’ve received great service over a range of many years. Now, when they were in the middle of trying to share a service, product, or membership to a friend or family member -- or when they were trying to do something as simple as pay a bill online for a change -- we’ve failed them. We botched a name spelling, we missed a time window for delivery, we charged their credit card 3 times instead of 1.
WE know the error happened because a particular technology transition was happening, or because we’ve changed vendors and haven’t uploaded all our CRM data yet. We find their complaint irritating and we try to pacify them and shut them up.
I’m saying, let’s embrace them. Let’s enlist them. Let’s ask them to join our “vigilance” club. Create a customer group that actively helps us seek out any weaknesses in our fabric of customer experience -- and ask them to join it. Let’s leverage their optimism and high faith in us -- and make them one of us.
They already see themselves as part of a relationship -- else they would blow us off the way they blow off a more trivial business relationship that fails them.
But they didn’t blow us off - they got mad - they complained. And while it can seem like a pain in the butt in the heat of the moment ... this is our opportunity.
I’m suggesting we live up to their expectations & respond to their complaints by enlisting them to help us make their experiences with us better.
They’ll know they were heard. They’ll believe we really are trying (because it shows). And they’ll tell their friends about us. That will likely mean more customers.
There is no down side.
