Excerpts from the first edition of "A Complaint is a Gift"

While doing a Google search for the new edition of "A Complaint Is a Gift", I stumbled across a list of quotes compiled by Andrew Gibbons from the first edition of the book.

You can download the excerpts and quotes here. I would also recommend visiting Andrew's site as there are many other free book excerpts available.

Soon you will also be able to read excerpts from the new book here on the blog, so sign-up to receive the RSS feed or sign up for email news in the right-hand navigation.

5 Myths of Complaint Handling

I thought I'd just share this little teaser excerpt from the forthcoming second edition of "A Complaint is a Gift" with you. These are 5 myths about complaint handling, which you might find useful to keep in mind when dealing with annoyed customers.

Myth # 1: People naturally know how to handle complaints. After all, they've been receiving them their entire lives.
Reality: Most people have to check their natural reactions when they receive complaints. At some level, a complaint is perceived as an attack, and when confronted most of us are inclined to attack back, especially if the complaint is delivered in a blaming manner. Effective complaint handling requires that we counter our instinctive tendencies. When staff who work call-center phones hear themselves on tape with a customer, they are frequently surprised that they sound so hostile and arrogant with customers.

Myth # 2: It's a good idea to set targets to reduce the number of complaints you receive.
Reality: Bad idea! If you set targets to reduce complaints, your staff will help you by not reporting the bad news they hear. To some degree this normally happens.
Setting targets to reduce complaints will only encourage staff to make sure your organization receives even less customer feedback. Your staff will do this by making it more difficult for customers to complain or by discarding complaint evidence.

Myth # 3: If you give customers what they want, you have satisfied them.
Reality: No way! Giving customers what they want when they complain does not guarantee satisfaction. There is a huge emotional component to complaints. If this emotionality is not addressed, you can give customers whatever they want, and they will still walk away upset. Good responders understand the psychological dimensions of complaint handling.

Myth # 4: Complaint handling and sales are unrelated.
Reality: Complaint handling is as demanding a task as is sales. Actually, a good complaint handler is, in effect, a sales person for your organization because they keep your customers coming back.

Myth # 5: Complaints are a sign that your company is not doing a quality job.
Reality: Companies will always create some dissatisfaction for their customers. Zero defects is a target, often not a possibility. Your quality suffers when you fail to hear this dissatisfaction. Complaints represent an open dialogue with your customers who are giving you a chance to keep their business. They are giving you information you might otherwise not hear that you can use to improve your quality. At a minimum, complaining customers are talking with you, rather than the rest of the world. And that is a gift!

"A Complaint is a Gift" hits the shelves in bookstores across the US on August 1st. You can also pre-order a copy from Amazon.com or read more about the book in previous posts.

More Information on "A Complaint is a Gift"

The book description page for the second edition of A Complaint is a Gift is now live at BKConnection.com and I thought I might as well just present it in the same way that Janelle Barlow and Claus Møller have over there:

• Demonstrates why complaints are the biggest bargain in market research, and how companies can use this information as a strategic tool to increase business

• Offers a complete Complaints Policy that readers can implement in their companies

• Presents dozens of real-life striking examples of poor-and excellent- complaint handling

Customer complaints can give businesses a wake-up call when they're not achieving their fundamental purpose-meeting customer needs. Complaints provide a feedback mechanism that can help organizations rapidly and inexpensively shift products, service style, and market focus. Unfortunately many businesses dodge responsibility for a customer's dissatisfaction, believing that complaining customers are trying to get something for free or that the problem is the customer's fault. Businesses who don't value their customers' complaints suffer from costly, negative word-of-mouth advertising.

A Complaint Is a Gift shifts the paradigm about how complaints are viewed by business. By presenting dozens of striking examples and research studies, Janelle Barlow and Claus Moller show that companies must view complaints as gifts if they are to have loyal customers. A Complaint Is a Gift is a "how to" book for those who want to turn complaints into a strategic tool to increase business and customer satisfaction, and to learn something new about products and services. It is filled with practical guidance:

• how to behave as if complaints are gifts
• how to use communication principles to handle upset customers
• how to respond to written complaints
• how to handle personal criticism, and more

A Complaint Is a Gift also tells how to create complaint-friendly organizations by encouraging customers to speak out. It outlines communication structures that can facilitate the movement of complaints from frontline staff to upper management, allowing customer-identified problems to be fixed within the company. Complaint-friendly cultures are described in detail, and specific structures are suggested that can be adopted by companies interested in becoming complaint-friendly.

A Complaint Is a Gift repositions the role of complaints in business-and argues that handling customer complaints is not just about making customers feel better. It is a book for individuals and companies to deal with complaints in a new and refreshing way. It also brings together three decades of customer dissatisfaction research and shows how companies can use this information to change internal policies and practices.
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The first edition has sold more than 130,000 copies so far and it's very exciting to see the buzz that is starting to build around the new edition. For more information and to order a copy see the previous post about its release.

2nd Edition of "A Complaint is a Gift" Hits the Shelves on August 1!

I'm happy to announce that BK Business is releasing an updated version of the customer service management bestseller "A Complaint is a Gift" on August 1, 2008. As with the first edition, released in 1996, this book has been co-authored with Janelle Barlow and will feature brand new and up-to-date examples of how to deliver great customer service through handling customer complaints. When I originally developed the concept as a 1-day training programme with a small booklet of cases, examples, ideas, tests and implementation guides back in 1993, it was considered a novel concept that a complaint could be a gift. Most people thought that I had lost my marbles and I was often asked: "How can you say that a complaint is a gift? Have you ever been on the frontline dealing with irate customers?" My response was quite simply that if our customers do not tell us what we're doing wrong, they're probably not telling us what we're doing right, either.

• Handling complaints in an efficient manner does not only give us the opportunity to determine if there is anything wrong with our products, services or delivery mechanisms.
• It also allows us to establish a better relationship with the complaining customer. Research has shown that at heart, most of the people who complain actually want to remain your customers so this is an ideal opportunity to turn them into even more loyal customers rather than risk them spreading bad word-of-mouth around.

One of the key premises of the original book was some shocking research from TARP that showed that on average, an unhappy customer will tell 23 of their peers about their experiences, whilst somebody who has had a positive experience will only share that information with 9 peers. Furthermore, the cost of retention for almost all product and service categories is manyfold lower than the costs of a new customer acquisition. Therefore you cannot afford to take customer complaints lightly, but must learn to treat them as gifts. You can pre-order "A Complaint is a Gift" (2nd edition) from Amazon now.