From the Customer Management Community – www.insightexec.com

Satisfaction not guaranteed: is it time to rethink complaints management?
By Louise Druce, staff writer

The Brits have a reputation for not liking to complain, but it seems that shoddy customer service has finally set our stiff upper lips all of a quiver. Perhaps fuelled by hours spent listening to soft rock on loop in call centre queues or waiting for an acknowledgement that the e-mail bemoaning a poor experience hasn’t simply vanished into the ether, a new complaint culture is emerging.
Feedback in an instant

Rob Keve, CEO of Fizzback argues: “Box ticking is notoriously poor in terms of accuracy because however many questions you ask you’ll find all the answers will be weighted towards the customer’s overall experience.”

His company has come up with a faster way for customers to get their message across with an instant, electronic feedback service. The advantage is that not only can customers register a complaint at the exact moment they are using a product or service, the business itself gets a more honest insight into how the customer is really feeling at the time, rather than waiting for comments after they have festered over a period of time.

Bourne Leisure, which counts Haven, British Holidays and Butlins among its portfolio, has installed the Fizzback system at its resorts in Minehead, Bognor and Skegness. If guests encounter any problems, be it a missing pillow or something more serious, they can send a text message that goes straight to an onsite manager for action.

After an initial response acknowledging the complaint, another text is generated after two hours to check it has been dealt with to the guest’s satisfaction. If not, it is routed to an off-site manager to flag up.

“It’s made significant changes to how our guests communicate with us,” says Gill Benwell, director of Bourne Leisure. “Before, they had to trudge to reception or to an office. By the time they found someone to talk to, what could have been a small problem might have become a much larger one because we made it difficult for them.

“We do have people with clipboards knocking on doors but it can get confrontational and you can’t be everywhere at once or in the right place at the right time as far as our guests are concerned. So it’s either very labour intensive or
inefficient from their point of view.”

Since installing the system, the volume of communication has gone up, but Benwell says the company is welcoming all the feedback, rather than encouraging a situation where it sits on problems it is not even aware of. “There is nowhere to hide, which is good. It’s the only way we’re going to know where we’re falling down,” she concedes. “But if we manage those issues correctly we get a thank you back, so everybody wins at the end of the day.”
The weather is one thing…

It’s not so much the fact that they have to complain that really angers customers, it’s when they feel they are being ignored altogether – the YouGov survey, commissioned by RightNow Technologies, points to telecommunications, ISP providers, banks, insurers and utilities companies as being particular culprits.

As Keve points out, regardless of industry, if customers have an issue and the company is able to resolve it quickly and efficiently they are likely to be far more loyal and trust the brand, greatly improving retention rates.

Cognitive behavioural psychotherapist Gladena McMahon reinforces this message. “Although the British have a reputation for complaining about the inclement weather, in reality, the majority of us don’t enjoy making a complaint and it usually takes something relatively significant to drive us to that point,” she says.

“However, once we reach that point we do expect empathy and action. It’s like most things in life, when we have a problem we seek a ‘listening ear’ – companies need to be mindful of this and act accordingly.”