Thank your complaining customers

Don’t you appreciate having friends who will tell you honestly when you have spinach in your teeth?  I sure do! I live by the principle that I treat people the way I want to be treated.  Consequently, I will tell complete strangers (very discretely of course) when they are suffering from a social faux pas, like having spinach in their teeth.  But everyone is not like me, and even I don’t always tell businesses how they infuriate me and send me running to their competitor – often, because I can’t.  There is no way to communicate with them.  Once I was so mad at Target (a store I actually love…usually) that I was motivated enough to go to the web survey (that if you’ll notice all the big box stores are printing on their receipts) – and THE URL DIDN’T WORK.  Talk about frustrating!  I had to just let it go.  The big stores are begging for feedback – because they know that they need the insight of the “complainers” to improve their offerings. In business, people are unlikely to tell you what’s wrong.  Instead, they’ll just slink off to your competitors, leaving you wondering what you did wrong.  The good news is that for a small business, you can make it really easy to communicate.  You just have to learn to listen.  Don’t be defensive.  Be open-minded. When people call “complaining” about service, product or delivery problems, you should THANK THEM profusely. They’re telling you, “I want to do business with you.  I care enough to tell you.”  Of course, if you don’t DO anything with that information, then your customers will be even more frustrated.  If you’re not willing to change your business to fix the customer complaints, then you might need to find different clients.  Find clients whose values better align with what your business offers.   Know what I mean?  How do you deal with customer complaints?  How do you think businesses should ask for your feedback?

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