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

We're changing our format a little this month and sharing a statement from a reader of A Complaint Is a Gift. It tickled us to receive this message, and we think you'll enjoy reading how someone has applied the Complaint Is a Gift messages as well. The author of this letter has given us permission to reprint it here. 

Dear Janelle Barlow: 

I just finished reading your book for the second time. The first read through was a couple of years ago. I was on a customer service reading marathon. I read 25 books in one month. A Complaint is a Gift was the best, and it remains top on my list. I always have extra copies on hand because I frequently give them to people that I meet. I just gave one to the customer service director at the Palmetto Post Office the other day. When he asked me if he could help me, I told him that I had a "gift" for him today. He said that he needed one because he'd just returned from a two-week vacation and he was paying the price. When I explained to him that mine was a problem-gift, he was disappointed, until we started talking about your book later in the conversation. When he started writing down the name of your book, I told him that I would be pleased to bring him a copy the next day. "You see," I said, "our conversation really was a gift!" 

Your book has changed my business and my life. I used to think that I delivered good customer service, but I was one of the people who used to roll my eyes, after a customer finished giving me a gift. I would make statements like, "I wish these customers would leave me alone, so I can get some work done." What an eye opener, when I saw myself in the pages of your book! 

My husband and I have 24 businesses around the United States, called The People Store. All of our business is conducted over the phone. We are a dating, voice mail service. We give people the chance to meet other singles locally, in their city, and we provide educational tools to help them in their dating quest.  

I have incorporated the tools that you provide for customer service in our company. We live and breath customer service and we have fun doing it. It's a way of life for us. When a new staff person is hired, they receive two hours of initial training in our customer service philosophies and many of the ideas are from your book. We actually call problems and complaints, "gifts" in our everyday conversations. 

Our staff responds to customers' questions and gifts by voice mail. We train our staff to respond to a gift using the 8 step response, rewritten to fit our needs. New staff people role play so they don't sound like they're reading a script, which sometimes can be quite a challenge. In order to loosen people up, we role play with Groucho glasses, and we walk around the room flapping our arms. It makes people smile and sound friendly, every time. Managers monitor staff responses to customers and work with new staff until they can put the eight steps in their own words. When we started using the 8-step response we actually started RECEIVING thank you messages from our customers. They thank us for being so helpful and for caring about them. 

Just about all of our staff work part-time. They are mothers who are choosing to stay home and raise their children. All of their work is done from their homes. Our company mission statement says: Our goal is that each staff person would find joy in their work and in turn, they would pass it on to their customers, to other staff people, to their families, to friends and even to strangers. 

I wanted you to know that A Complaint is a Gift has played a big part in the joy that each of us experiences in our daily work. Thank you very much for writing the book. It truly has been a "gift" to many people. 

Thanks a bunch......Suzanne Beecher, co-owner, The Computer Group, 3 

And thank you Suzanne Beecher for sharing so generously! 
 
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	Overselling Service
#2	Not Listening to Complaints
#3	Plastic Chicken
#4	Complaints You Can Do Nothing About
#5	A+ Complaint Handling
#6	Beware! Others are Watching You
#7	At Least Keep Talking!
#8	Let Customers Know You'll Tell Someone
#9	If You're Going to Apologize, Then Mean It
#10	Keep Front-life Staff Well Informed
#11	Don't Set Goals to Reduce Complaints
#12	Products Used During Special Events
#13	Best Practices of Complaint-friendly Organizations
#14	Complaints About Mother Nature!
#15	Socially Offensive Situations

 

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 
 
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