It is TMI's intention that each one of these examples will increase your personal understanding of how to improve your own complaint handling. 

I just recently encountered a unique strategy for responding to a complaintand I can tell you it wasn't effective at all. I have told several people about the situation, and they all tell me they have encountered similar reactions to their complaints, so apparently it is a more widespread technique than I realize. 

I stayed in a hotel in a to-be-unnamed Latin American country, and was dissatisfied with a number of things. First, the room had no hair dryer, and I was paying over $200 per night for the room. When I asked that a hair dryer be brought to my room, I had to sign for it, with a large notice on the receipt that if I didn't return the hair dryer, I would be charged for it. The profit produced by this room, measured by the room's quality, would have been sufficient to buy a new hair dryer each night. Not a lot of trust there! I couldn't open the windows, and the room was particularly stuffy. The room had been painted so recently that the odor was still strong. When I told the room service attendant about the smell, he thought it very funny. "Yes," he explained, "they just painted all the rooms on this floor today." As if that were an acceptable explanation for someone who was going to spend the night breathing in paint fumes. And don't wonder why I didn't ask for a room change. The reception I got at check-in made me realize that requesting a change in rooms would have been futile. 

The lamps in the room threw off very little light, making it almost impossible to read. To create a bit more light, I attempted to remove the lamp shades, but they seemed to be glued on. The air conditioner was impossible to control. It either was stifling hot in the room, or icy cold. There were a few other problems as well, but I won't bother you with them. Suffice it to say, that with the paint fumes filling the room, I noticed every other defect in that hotel. 

The next morning when I checked out, after having spent a grand total of 10 hours in the hotel (Incidentally, that's twenty dollars per hour.), I told the receptionist I wanted to tell her about a few problems with my accommodations. She did speak English, because we had been communicating a moment before. I began my litany with just a couple of the problems. She said nothing, but merely looked at me. She maintained eye contact but had nary an expression on her face. Finally, I stopped, as one tends to do in conversation if the other person doesn't say anything. She continued to stare. 

Her silence inspired me to up the complaint ante. I said, "And furthermore, please tell your manager, I will never again return to this hotel." Again, she just continued to stare. Finally, without one single word from her lips, she turned away. One thing that can be said for her style, is that it was very economical. It was also very efficient in getting me to a state of disgust with the quality of the hotel, and a firm resolve to take my business elsewhere. 

At a minimum, we have to keep talking with our customers when they are dissatisfied. If you have a conversation with someone and they are totally unresponsive, you will probably start speaking louder, gesturing more, perhaps clap your hands to see if the person can hear. These are not the behaviors we want from our customers. Whatever short lived psychic gratification we might experience from silently staring down a customer who is delivering a complaint, is going to come back to haunt us with anything but silence. The message will be loud and clear. I'm going to give my money to some other place of business!

Janelle M. Barlow, Ph.D.  

Coauthor, A Complaint Is a Gift, Using Customer Feedback as a Strategic Tool 
  

Previous "Complaint Is A Gift Corner" pages:  
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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.

 

A Complaint Is a Gift, The Training Program  

  A Complaint Is a Gift, The Book  

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

tel: 702 939-1800 
 
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