Statistics show that only 4% of unhappy customers actually complain to the companies responsible for the bad service experiences. Instead of complaining to the companies, unhappy customers, on average, tell 10 relatives, friends, and even strangers about their negative experiences. And... 13% of them will tell 20 other people! This is justification for the “encourage customer complaints” mantra.

If you don’t make it easy for customers to complain, you will not hear about most of your customers’ unhappy experiences. Remember the old saying, “complaints are gifts, or opportunities?” Without the complaints, you don’t have the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive for unhappy customers. Furthermore, and just as important, you don’t have the opportunity to identify problems that could be fixed, thus preventing other customers from experiencing the same negative situation.

Educate employees about the value of a complaint. It’s important that they truly see the opportunities presented rather than considering a complaint as an inconvenience or personal assault. Consider recognizing employees who do the following: 1) identify complaints and 2) offer suggestions for eliminating the situation that caused the complaint in the first place.

Here are a few ideas for capturing customer complaints before they become “tales of woe” that could be repeated to current or potential new customers:

• Your first line of defense is your front line employees. Typically they will know when someone is unhappy about something. Encourage employees to take advantage of such situations by making things right immediately.
• Instruct employees to ask if the service received met the customer’s expectations. This is an opportunity to identify minor issues that may not be obvious during interaction with less expressive customers.
• As a leader, set the example by spending part of your day or week interacting with guests or customers. Thank them for using your product or service and confirm that everything met their approval.
• When and where appropriate, use comment cards at the time of service.
• Also, consider collecting contact information such as email addresses, telephone numbers, and/or snail- mail addresses by offering to send advance notice of sales, discount coupons or something else of value. Use these opportunities to allow guests or customers to comment on past service.

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