What unhappy customers say and do - and what they want from you!
Featured in the Complaint handling for positive outcomes training manual
By Nina Lockwood
Category: Customer Service
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Research, done primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom, tells us that one in four customers have a problem with the products they purchase. Looking at the service industry overall, Technical Assistance Research Programs (TARP), a research organisation focusing on customer complaints, found that 26 out of 27 people who experienced poor service did not complain. Most customers feel that, by making a complaint, they are opening themselves up for further poor service, leading to further annoyance and frustration. They therefore choose to walk away rather than to make their feelings known. This is even more evident with service complaints than with product dissatisfaction. This training activity encourages participants to observe and investigate the behaviour of unhappy customers and, having identified a ‘complaint’, to start to consider ways of turning a potentially negative situation into a positive one. By the time a complaint is made, the customer has often ‘reached the end of their tether’ and this results in very different types of behaviours. By identifying these different behavioural styles, the participants are better equipped to deal with each situation effectively — to respond to the customer rather than react to the situation.
This training activity falls into six areas. 1. You start by defining a ‘complaint’. We all have very different perceptions of what constitutes a complaint. Indeed, some participants have remarked that a complaint only becomes one when it has been put in writing and that any verbal exchange is purely a ‘comment’ on the service or product. An exercise gives participant’s practice in identifying what complaints might look or sound like. 2. The participants then have the opportunity to consider the alarming statistics relating to customers who don’t complain directly to the organisation, and to identify some potential reasons for variances evident in these statistics. 3. Bad news travels fast, a fact that is illustrated in this exercise with some generic examples of human behaviour. 4. This is followed up with the good news – that we can turn a negative into a positive, depending on how we respond to the situation. 5. The training activity introduces the participants to the Reciprocity Principle – the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ philosophy of life – and its impact on effective complaint handling. 6. Finally, what do customers actually want when they make a complaint? It’s quite simple in the majority of cases. However, we have powerful tools at our disposal for exceeding the customer’s expectations and thus enhancing their perception of the organisation.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to help participants focus on the reasons why customers complain, highlighting the fact that it’s usually the little things that tip the balance.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 6 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:25:00 |
| No of Pages: | 22 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers with all members of staff, particularly those with customer-facing responsibilities. It enables experienced members of staff to review their personal performance and share their experience, and more recently appointed staff to understand the huge impact their performance can have on the perception of the customer.
Download the training activity, What unhappy customers say and do - and what they want from you! as featured in the Fenman training manual; Complaint handling for positive outcomes