Taking a look at the complaints handling news, results published in  June are worth a second look. This news that complaints volumes are rising at Britain’s railway companies can easily be accepted. Most people will have heard of overcrowding. In late June, 50 year old pieces of railway infrastructure struggled with the heat. No wonder the customer service performance was badly affected.

Digging behind the story, it is clear that as customer service satisfaction has fallen, the number of complaints have risen. That too is not unexpected news as it is common sense that having fewer satisfied customers is likely to lead to you having more dissatisfied customers. Why is it then that so many businesses find it hard to believe that excellent complaints handling can increase customer loyalty?

There is hope

I think I may have found one of the reasons. My work on complaints handling has found that firms complaint systems are programmed to measure and record the complaints and not the consequences of the complaints handling. Much emphasis is put into complaints systems encouraging fast and thorough resolution. There is a sense of win/lose about them. “Justified or not?” is a phrase often used. This language is often drawn from the legal influences of regulation and potential litigation. Such language is often defensive and speaks of a mindset that complaints are to be avoided rather than welcomed as opportunities to improve. But are businesses measuring whether those who complain remain with the organisation or choose to leave? Now that would be an interesting measure for the success of your complaints handling. The Lifetime Value of the customer might actually be higher for those who have complained.

In the drive for process improvement don’t forget the people

The emphasis of the FSA on “Root Cause Analysis” of financial services complaints is a laudable effort to get the focus onto putting things right for the future customer experience. But great though this logical tool is for helping tease out process and product improvements, it is less helpful in my view on the people issues.

It is hard in such a process to consider the motivation of a complainant. How much is it about getting redress or simply an apology? Are there feelings involved? The NHS Ombudsman writes from time to time about patients who simply just want an acknowledgement that a mistake was made and a genuine apology for it. Clearly finding out from a complainant what would put the matter right could be very helpful if you are trying to resolve a complaint. It might be simpler that it seems. Understanding the motivation and feelings is an important part of good complaints handling.

Are these customers loyal?

Then again there are those complainants who want to stop the problem they have experienced happening to someone else. Why would they care about this unless they were likely to want to remain a customer? Often complainants want to see improvements in service because they want to continue to use you. After all they made a decision to use your business and it is reassuring to them to know they made the right decision. Some research undertaken by a UK insurance business found that those who complained had a higher customer retention level than those who didn’t. So solving complaints can increase loyalty. Are you measuring this?

So when you hear that customer satisfaction is down and complaints up on Britain’s railways, think about your business and consider how with excellent customer service and complaints handling, customer loyalty could be increased.

At Training To Achieve we have set up a specialist Complaints Handling Training arm called Reduce Complaints we want to see businesses improve their customer service and complaints handling: rather than experience a downward spiral as has been seen on the railways in recent news coverage, we want to help firms start an upward cycle. We think complaints are great, a good thing and that they should be encouraged.  Otherwise the chance of meeting customer needs and improving is very limited.  We also believe that it is possible to Reduce Complaints by actually resolving complaints and making sure they don’t recur.

We’d love to hear from you if you want some help with improving customer service or complaints handling or simply just want to talk customer service.

Gordon Miles