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Can You Top This?
Listed below are outrageous examples of poor or
simply outstanding complaint handling. It is TMI's
intention that each one of these examples will increase
your personal understanding of how to improve your own
complaint handling.
 NOT
LISTENING TO COMPLAINTS
 Francis F.
called a major airline to express an opinion. Francis
feels that she gets better service when she orders her
tickets from her travel agent than when she calls the
airline reservations lines. In fact, Francis says that
almost always mistakes occur when she makes her
reservations through the airline personnel, and this
almost never happens with her travel agent. So, Francis
called this unnamed airline to tell them that she wanted
the airline to know that she doesn't like the changes she
sees happening in the airline business: namely, that the
airlines are cutting commissions on ticket sales to the
travel agents. Many travel agents will simply go out of
business, and the ones that stay in business will likely
start charging fees for their services. Given the
difference in quality, Francis wanted the airline to know
how she felt about it.
She was told
was that the reservations agents couldn't discuss the
matter. (Apparently, from what Francis could figure out,
it's some kind of legal no-no for airline personnel to
discuss this issue with the public.) So, Francis asked
the reservations agent to pass her comments along to this
airline's management. The reservations agent told Francis
that this could not be done.
Francis is
persistent if nothing else. Thinking this was just an
irritated or lazy reservations agent, she called again,
and got the same message from another reservations agent.
In other words, this airline is telling the public that
they don't want to hear their customers' opinions.
This is
definitely not being complaint friendly. In fact, it's
one of the worst messages a company can send to its
customers. In effect, shut up, we don't want to hear from
you.
We suspect
there is more to this story than meets the eye, and we
would appreciate the airlines letting us know what is
going on here. In any case, we strongly advise our
clients to never send this message to your customers.
Perhaps a certain issue cannot be discussed with the
customers, but certainly the customers comments can be
passed on to management without getting into a
conversation with the customer about the issue.
We suspect
that what has happened is that this airline has advised
its reservations clerks to not discuss the issue with
customers, and they in turn have interpreted this to mean
that they can't pass messages along either. Does anybody
know anything about this? We'd appreciate learning more
about this situation.
How could
this have been handled better? The reservations clerk
could say to the customer that because of legal
restrictions they cannot engage in discussion about the
issue of commissions and travel agents--but that they
would be happy to put the customer in touch with someone
who could talk to them about it, or at a minimum, pass
their comments on to management. At bottom line, no one
likes to be told, "You can't talk about that."
This only increases the ire of most customers, and then
they will never stop talking about the issue.
Previous "Complaint Is A Gift Corner" pages: #1
| We invite you
to submit your "best" examples by fax
or e-mail. We won't print any
company names with the "poor" examples,
because we believe that every organization fails
from time to time. We will give credit to
companies delighting their customers. In the case
of the "poor" examples, we'll comment
on how we think this situation could have been
handled better. If you want us to list your name,
please tell us that is what you want to do. |
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Note: We have been
getting e-mail from our readers asking us to list the
names of the companies who get complaints. Our policy is
to never list names. The reason for this is because every
company fails from time to time, and we wouldn't want to
tar some company's name just because of one bad example.
Furthermore, we are dependant upon the writer's side of
the story. We don't know for sure what happened, and in
the name of fairness, we will not post names.
Furthermore, the purpose of this corner is not to pass
complaints along to corporations. This Complaint Is a
Gift corner is designed to look at examples of good and
bad complaint handling so we can learn from these
experiences. Please, if you have a direct complaint you
want a company to learn about, contact them directly. In
many cases, we have never heard of the company in
question and have no idea how to reach them. Janelle
Barlow
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