A Complaint Is a Gift (Paperback)

by Janelle Barlow (Author), Claus Moller (Author) "Imagine that an old friend you haven't seen in year comes to visit you on your birthday with a lovely present in hand..." (more)
Key Phrases: effective complaint handling, complaining customers, deviate from policy, Gift Formula, Hong Kong, Case Study (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American
"This is simply a terrific book, chock-full of thought-provoking concepts and ideas that are just plain smart. I have found few business books to be this useful. I plan to review it regularly to keep me on top of my craft."

Review
"A complaint Is a Gift is itself a gift. This is a jewel of a book about the most important issue in the development of any person or organization-how to respond to feedback from others, especially when it isn't flattering or positive. Follow the authors' eight-step gift formula, and you'll be richly rewarded. ignore it, and you'll pay dearly." -- Jim Kouzes, coauthor of The Leadership Challenge and Credibility

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Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1 edition (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881052818
• ISBN-13: 978-1881052814
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #435,074 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turning Complaints Into Profitable, Long-Term Success!, September 23, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

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?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!, February 16, 2001

By	Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a gift!, December 10, 1997

By	[e-mail] (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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