Customer Reviews

A Complaint Is a Gift

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book creates a new paradigm concerning customer dissatisfaction: The complaint is a major economic opportunity which can be systematically used to improve business processes, reduce errors, increase quality, strengthen bonds with customers, and create expanded growth and profitability. The reason: We normally see things from the company's view point, and miss many mistakes and opportunities by not empathizing enough with the customer's view point. A good related book is Moments of Truth (which I also reviewed), which looks at using this approach during the turnaround of SAS.

The book is organized into three parts. The first one looks at the economic implications of complaints. Complaints are an opportunity to improve (the theory behind the gift paradigm), are cheap market research, present chances to win over customers, can establish a closer link to customers if we encourage them to complain, and are a great economic threat if we leave the enraged customer dissatisfied (as they tell everyone they can on television and the Internet). There are many useful examples and statistics to establish the size and importance of these economic connections.

Part II explains how to implement a complaint-as-a-gift program in an individual circumstance of dealing with an unhappy customer. The key barrier here is that front-line employees feel the pain of the personal attacks they receive, and fight back. I thought the best part of the book was in the explanations about how the psychology of these interactions works in most cases, and can be improved. The book has many scripts and examples of how to make this less painful for the front-line people while delighting the customer.

Part III looks at making a complaint-friendly enterprise, by implementing this concept as broadly and as deeply as possible in your organization. This requires making it easier to access your company (toll-free numbers and rapid replies to letters), having complaint-friendly policies, improving your culture to handle and enjoy complaints, extending the same approach to satisfying internal customers, and launching the changes in the right way as a permanent part of your way of doing business.

Reading this book made me uncomfortable in one area: What can be done to treat employees well who bear the burden of the complaints? It seemed to me that the processes described here still leave the customer well ahead of the employee in emotional terms. I don't believe we can expect companies to perform well if customers get great treatment which includes being able to verbally, emotionally, and perhaps physically abuse employees. My feeling is that customers need to understand what the limits of reasonable behaviors are in complaining. Those who behave better should get great treatment, and those who behave poorly should get the benefit of the doubt. But no one should have to put up with what they would not tolerate from a guest in their own home.

My proposal is that this system should be beefed up with marketing and promotional tools that encourage good behavior by the customers when they complain, and clear rules that customers and employees both understand about how much the employee is expected to take before protecting him- or herself.

After you read and apply the ideas in this book (which are certainly sound as far as they go in defining many aspects of the opportunity), think about where else you would benefit from hearing more complaints. If your spouse and children don't complain, is it possible that you are avoiding hearing complaints at the cost of having a poorer relationship with them that cannot bear much honest communication? Who would you like to receive more complaints from? How can you encourage those complaints?

At a time where companies spend millions to attract new customers, this book offers low-cost methods for keeping the customers you already have. Authors Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller advocate using customer complaints to help your business grow. This highly readable book achieves a perfect balance of general information backed up by hard, statistical data. While this book is written for "anyone who deals with customers and who would like to benefit from customer feedback," the end of the book focuses more on steps top-level managers can take to implement a "complaint-friendly organization." We at getAbstract.com recommend this book to managers and to people in front-line, customer service positions. Giving a copy of this book to your front-line personnel would be an excellent first step toward making your organization complaint friendly.

I am a customer service representative who is using this book as a major guide to constructing a customer service department for an internet based financial publication. I have more post-its on my office walls than paint. I can't stop the ideas from pouring out of me or the book. It has to be in my small but possibly cosmic opinion this is the best book written on how to deal with people and their problems with a product or service. I highly recommend it to anyone who is trying to better understand what their customers are thinking and not saying.

Mario Viscardi

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I wrote this in 2011 -->

I will agree with one other reviewer that the book often acts like an advertisement for the author's business. They plug their company relentlessly.

That is really the only good critique I have of the book. It would be a much stronger read if a times it didn't come across as self-serving.

Now lowering my rating to 4 stars.

Even so, treating complaints like free market research is something all companies should do.

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I wrote this in 2000 -->

I will agree that the scholarship in this book isn't the weightiest. It's a fairly light read. And it does act as a product plug for the authors shamelessly and repeatedly. And it does sort of repeat the same few points over and over again. However dismissing it as tripe misses the point.

The book DOES NOT recommend kowtowing to or embracing rude customers. It DOES recommend listening to complaints and methodically engaging in a dialogue about them. This can allow you to diagnose systemic failures, discover new ways to offer value, and identify inefficent activities.

It also doesn't recommend pitting employees against customers. What should a manager do if their employees complain to them? Should they follow the techniques recommended in this book and listen or turn a deaf ear?

What's truly pathetic is that this understanding of the potential value of complaints should be standard policy in every company in the world. Industries spend vast sums every year on market research, trying to figure out what their customers want. Then they turn right around and often ignore customers who tell them.

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I wrote this in 1998 -->

This book is a fantastic discussion of an often ignored area of customer service: complaints. Standard policy at most businesses is to treat complaints as a necessary evil, and this book makes an overwhelming case that they should be viewed as a boon. Instead of dismissing them or tolerating them, they should be analzyed and recorded as vitally important feedback. After all, a complaint is simply a customer telling you how you can improve.

In my own workplace I've used these concepts to great advantage. It has definitely improved my service. Recently I even got into an argument with my boss regarding one of our customers who constantly complains. He thinks she's a pest we should blow off, but over time I've grown to value her as an unfiltered source of honest feedback. When we screw up she tells us! Yowza! I even complimented her in a meeting one day because she complains so much. Many of our other customers smile and say nothing.

When my boss heard that I had specifically asked for more complaints, he almost shot me. He thinks complaints should be "prevented" or "re-interpreted." Anyway, after I started trying to embrace her complaints instead of dodging them, she not only became more understanding when we screwed up, but she became one of my biggest personal supporters! She's even volunteered to write me a recommendation if I need it!

Unlike many books on the subject, this publication is very quick to deal with the practical behaviors and steps for dealing with customers. Although the writers at times may feel there is never a bad customer, they still provide very realistic and helpful models for dealing in the customer service business. The book is also written broadly enough to be usefull to practitioners outside of the typical customer call center environment. I am an H.R. Director in a Middle East service related company. I found many of the issues, ideas and concepts very applicable to staff organizations as well.

When you read this book you will understand how to handle customers complaints from a different point of view. It teachs you in a joyfull and gracious manner how to handle complaints thru differents points of contact: phone, face to face or written.

You will be able to classify customers depending their character and reaction. One of the most valuables chapters in this book is the one where the authors describe the different levels that a customer pass thru his desguise. So you will be able to act as soon as you recognize the customer will take off your control. Great knowledge!

This is a very dynamic, funny book that will have you wake up all the time. Usefull for managers or front liners.

For me, this book have been a truly gift!

Excellent book to help front line people realize that customers who take the time and energy to let you know about the service they received from your organization are really giving you a gift. The gift is their insight into the workings of your organiztion as seen through the eyes of those who had the experience. Valuable information for those wanting to improve on the delivery of a product or service. Easy to read and understand also great for quick reference.

I used this book in my conflict management course. The students (colleges juniors and seniors) liked the book because it was easy to read and discussed many interesting examples of the benefits derived from processing ;complaints constructively. I recommend this book for supplementary reading in a conflict management or customer relations course. It is not, however, suitable as the primary text for a serious course.

I just discovered this book, and it is a godsend! I have my entire company reading it. We can tell that there is a profound difference in the way that our customers respond to us. Janelle Barlow is a very gifted researcher with the ability to make complex ideas clearly understandable. Her co-author, Claus Moller, is one of Europe most highly regarded management gurus. The book even comes with a forward by the Chairman of British Airways -- who credits the methods discussed with turning his complany around from a money-loser to one of the world's premier airlines. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to get better at customer service.

Not just another customer service how-to, "A Complaint is a Gift" is an extremely practical, intelligent and inspired approach to customer retention. Rather than a top-down technique that sounds great on paper, the ideas outlined in the book are tools that front-line staff can understand and apply. My organization hired Janelle Barlow to teach these principles to our clinical staff, who thought they had nothing new to learn but unanimously said these lessons revolutionized their relationships with patients. (We now joke about how we received a "gift" today.) We highly recommend the book as well as the training.