Many years ago, I presented the first version of our TurnFriendly complaint management system to a board member of an insurance company. I proudly showed him how easy it was to manage complainants and their complaints. Even then, the web application allowed users to create their own categorisation trees, which remain an essential building block in complaint management today. What follows is a practical example of complaint management that I still cannot forget.
At the end of my presentation, I asked: ‘Can you imagine using TurnFriendly to record, process and analyse all complaints across your company?’ Given its very large customer base, I was absolutely convinced that the company needed it.
The board member replied: ‘We have no complaints, Mr Rothberg.’ That brought the presentation to a natural end. ‘I see,’ I replied, trying to pack away my projector with some composure before saying goodbye.
Every company has complaints
I thought about this conversation for a long time—as you can see, I still do. Many questions went through my mind.
- Are there companies that really have no complaints?
- Has a complaint management process even been established?
- Does company policy declare complaints to be irrelevant?
My starting point is that no company is free of complaints. That perfect company has yet to be invented. Some companies, however, have service quality and customer satisfaction embedded in their DNA. Amazon is certainly one of them, and its success bears out Jeff Bezos's approach.
Complaint management is not valued enough
In sales, the number of successful deals is something to be proud of. It generates revenue, and that success is highly regarded. Complaint management cannot shine through the number of successfully closed complaints, because in practice companies often do not measure whether a customer remains loyal after receiving a response to their complaint. We will discuss how satisfaction relating to complaints can be measured and made transparent in a future article.
In my experience, company policy is often the reason complaint management does not receive the recognition it deserves.
How do you measure success in complaint management?
I return to this question again and again. My customers are complaint managers, whom I want to help handle as many complaints as possible—and, above all, handle them successfully. Guess what gets analysed? The number of complaints processed per employee per day. Would it not make more sense to measure customers' satisfaction with the handling of their complaints? The dilemma is that this would create more work, which ultimately nobody wants.
My advice: use a complaint management system that sends customers an email survey about complaint-handling satisfaction at the click of a button. This does not mean more work; it means gaining valuable insights.
A practical example: Complaint management at Air Berlin
Some years ago, when Air Berlin was still one of Germany's leading airlines, technical problems prevented our aircraft from taking off. We waited, increasingly frustrated, in the departure lounge for more than six hours. As I am familiar with travel law, I submitted a written complaint to Air Berlin's customer service team.
The story did not end well for me. I was put off for months and did not obtain the remedy I was entitled to. I would have had to involve a lawyer, which I did not do out of convenience. I had firmly decided never to fly with the airline again.
Air Berlin's eventual fate is well known. The open question is: to what extent did its poor customer service contribute to its insolvency?