TMI US: TMI US: A Complaint is a Gift Corner

Feature Article:
Maintaining Superior Service

Can You Top This?

Listed below are outrageous examples of poor or simply outstanding complaint handling. We invite you to submit your "best" examples. 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.

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

Complaints Regarding Products Used During Special Events

Again, we are going to look at a category of complaints this month, instead of a specific complaint example. We will consider complaints that surround products or services that are special in the customer's mind because of their rarityfor the customer. Here are some examples of this type:

Flying to see grandparents you haven't seen in years!

Renting a tuxedo for a high school prom.

Buying flowers or a cake for a wedding.

Buying groceries to impress someone special coming to eat dinner with you in your home.

Visiting a loved one in the hospital.

Obviously, to service providers these situations occur all the time, if that is their business. The flight attendant flies sometimes several flights in a single day. I wonder how many realize they are uniting people who will be so emotional upon seeing each other, they will weep tears of joy. The clothing rental agency think they are renting clothing, not the dreams of senior proms. The florist think he or she is selling roses in a particular arrangement. How many fully understand that these flowers are going to live for decades in the memories of that bride and groom (and all their relatives) every time they look at their wedding pictures. Do grocers see the special dinner carefully prepared to impress a special guest, or is that a slab of meat they are selling? And does everyone in the hospital comprehend that for the visitor, their future security rest with how well someone under the hospital's care is doing.

So, when something goes wrong with these types of events, the service provider has to be particularly careful to remember there is a huge emotional content in the customer's mind supporting this complaint. And for this reason, the event will be remembered for an even longer time when compared to other events.

Every service provider should have the words of Mary Martin posted to a wall so they can be reminded of her famous retort when she was asked: "Don't you ever get tired of playing Peter Pan?"

(Mary Martin had played Peter Pan over seventeen hundred times, and her audiences always thrilled to see her fly in as her first appearance on the stage. If you've never seen the Peter Pan production, it is truly amazing when you see it for the first time.) Mary Martin replied: "To me, it be my 1,700th time, but to my audiences it's the first time."

You be delivering your service hundreds of times a day, but to that person standing in front of you, it be a one-in-a-lifetime event. And it's important that we remember how our customers remember us, especially during special moments of their lives! And if they have complaints about something that has happened during this special moment, we have to pay extra attention to handling it well.

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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    #2
    #3
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    #5
    #6
    #7
    #8
    #9
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#11

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

TMI US
8270 West Charleston Blvd
Las Vegas, Nevada 89117

tel: 702 939-1800

fax: 702 939-1804

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