Most organisations do not truly know what they believe about their customers until a complaint arrives. Mission statements are aspirational, and marketing campaigns can be curated. However, the moment a customer pushes back, expressing his frustration and disappointment, the process that responds reveals the organisation’s actual values. What the self-check organisations must do is ask how quickly actions are taken when complaints are made and how quickly someone takes ownership of the problem. This process of responding to customers should not be seen as administrative but as an operational activity that determines whether customers return or disappear permanently.
I believe complaint handling is the single most revealing process in any service organisation, and it can confer competitive advantage if it is made effective. It reveals, more clearly than any marketing campaign or mission statement, what a company believes about its customers and about itself. Every service business receives complaints because no organisation delivers perfection consistently. The differentiating factor is how they are handled when they arrive. Does the organisation treat the complaining customer as an inconvenience or as someone who cared enough about your service to tell you how it had failed them?
