- Can I speak with your manager?
- What’s your grievance process?
- How do I make a complaint please?
On the surface, these are straightforward questions. But they signal something that I’ve seen so many businesses struggle with – and in reality, this is where things often start to unravel for the company and customer.
Complaint processes are almost always built around the business – not the customer.
One way or another, they are designed to protect the business. They’re not ‘anti customer’ but they are often ‘anti complaint’ and that is exactly why customers can feel passed around instead of supported.
Where it usually falls apart is the journey. A customer raises a concern and bounces between departments, is asked to repeat themselves over and over, met with scripts and “computer says no” vibes.
At any interaction with a customer is an opportunity to either strengthen your brand perception with them, or weaken it. And a clear, transparent, human complaint journey is a non-negotiable. Not a maze. Not a treasure hunt. Not a means of just explaining why your process works that way.
One of the things I have learned most from my time in hospitality is that when something goes wrong, it gives you an opportunity to actually build a better relationship with a customer than if it hadn’t gone wrong in the first place.
It gives you a chance to meet a situation with empathy, and to show a customer that they’re being listened to – and valued. It doesn’t mean that whatever went wrong was ‘your fault’ but it is your problem to solve in that moment.
The truth is that a poor situation that is handled well can turn a customer into a loyal customer - even more than a customer who had an ‘ok’ interaction with no issues.
So here are 3 things that I’d encourage everyone to be thinking about around their business.
1. Are you really encouraging complaints to be met with the right mindset?
Are your frontline teams really meeting these moments with listening and empathy, or just switching into a ‘complaints handling process’. Because they’re different things. Really different. Are people trying to learn from complaints, or defend against them?
And if not – why not. Is it about training, culture or something else?
2. Are the ways that you measure complaints really framing the right responses?
Complaints shouldn’t just be measured by how many you close or how many have been upheld for the company or customer, they should be measured by actionable change.
- What percentage of your complaints actually leads to process improvement?
- What did you stop doing as a result?
- What changed in your training because of them?
If you’re not asking why it happened, where the process failed, whether training was missing or expectations weren’t clear, you’re not fixing anything.
3. When was your complaints journey last updated?
It can be an odd truth that the one area that provides the most amount of learning for your business, is usually the one that gets the least attention when it comes to improving the overall customer journey.
It is an empowered journey that can cut across the business, operate across a range of channels and react to the customer’s needs?
The journey around it warrants attention, care and investment.
Most complaints aren’t one-offs. They’re patterns. Systemic failures, not individual mistakes. Handled properly, they’re one of the richest data sources your business has that feed into hiring, training, processes and leadership.
You can only grow and learn from them – and it’s an incredible opportunity to show your customer what your business really is about.
