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 recently flew on a United States based carrier from San Francisco to Chicago's O'Hare airport. It was just after midnight when I arrived, so probably everyone was tired. I had three pieces of checked luggage, and it was all slow in arriving. Two of my pieces came up first. They were tagged first class. My third piece was not with the other two. 

After waiting what felt like a considerable period of time, I went to the airline representative who was standing by a computer nearby and told her that two pieces of my luggage had arrived, but my third piece was missing. She told me I had to go back and wait by the carousel, because some more luggage was arriving. I indicated that I had already received two pieces, and when this happens, it frequently means the third piece didn't make it on the same airplane. She would not check the status of my third piece of luggage and said I would just have to wait. In the meantime, she was doing nothing but standing by her computer. After another twenty minutes, all the luggage from the plane had arrivedexcept for my last piece. 

I returned to the woman by the computer. She was not happy to see me when I told her that (as I had predicted) my third piece was not on the plane. As she pounded away on her computer to locate my missing luggage, I told her that under the circumstances I thought I was owed an apology. After all, she could have checked 20 minutes earlier and I would have known at that time that my luggage wasn't on that airplane. And arriving after midnight, that twenty minutes was dear to me. 

She looked at me and said, "Well, I'm sorry." I can't get the tone of her voice in this essay, but believe me, she wasn't sorry. She was angry with me. Everything in her tone of voice and body language indicated she considered me yet another "unruly customer." I told her I didn't want her apology if it was going to be delivered in that manner. I received another surly, "Well, I'm sorry," from her. 

Any parent who has ever heard children say, "I'm sorry," when they don't mean it, will understand the frustration of hearing an apology that is not heart felt. Service providers: don't rub salt in the customer's wound. If you are going to say, "I'm sorry," then put some energy behind it, instead of sounding like a petulant child. That's definitely not going to encourage customer loyalty. 

What could that woman have said to recover from this situation? Here's what would have satisfied me. "My gosh. I'm really sorry. Not only is your luggage not here, but I've caused you to wait an additional twenty minutes. There's no excuse for that. All I can do is to apologize for my behavior and what happened. I'm really sorry." Then I could have been gracious and said, "Oh that's all right. I know many times luggage gets separated and arrives at different times." Then she could have responded: "But you warned me about that possibility, and I didn't listen to you." If she had owned the problem to that degree, I think I would have swooned on the floor at O'Hare, and said from the floor: "Really, that's okay. These things happen. It must not be easy working this shift." 

Apologies that are sincere are received in a totally different manner than ones that are pro forma. Excellent customer service is not about formulas. It's about handling feelings when things don't go the way they are supposed to.

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:  
#1  
    #2  
    #3  
    #4  
    #5  
    #6  
    #7  
    #8  
 
 
 

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 
 
fax: 702 939-1804 
 
email:  

Website designed by  
©2005, TMI US