Don’t Look a Complaining Customer in the Mouth
If a customer who complains is a gift for business why do customers ignore them? In my particular situation I wrote a detailed letter (yes very old school on paper with an envelope) to Qantas over really really bad service I received, I also emailed as well just to make sure and 6 weeks has gone by without hearing a peep from them. Business statistics say that only 3% of all customers complain which doesn’t mean that only 3% have reason to complain but only 3% take action. 97% choose to let it go or clearly go somewhere else.
It’s been proven that the customers that complain actually care about the product and in marketing speak are ‘advocates’ for the business i.e. usually do the company’s marketing for them through word of mouth. 76% of most business comes from word of mouth so how can businesses ignore this? Just to throw another statistic on the fire, each customer complaint usually represents 26 other customers who have had a similar problem. That’s 27 customers Qantas almost enough for a Qantaslink flight! I invested 2 hours of my time to alert Qantas to a major problem and they haven’t got the courtesy or businesss sense to contact me to discuss it. Somehow I don’t think it’s just Qantas who is looking this gift horse in the mouth. Hmmm I wonder how their share price is doing?
They are too busy handing out the $12m to the outgoing CEO. Unfortunately this is big business at it’s worse. The good news is that many are jumping on the social media bandwagon so people that can do something actually hear their complaints. In Australia we are a bit behind on this but I’m sure we’ll catch up.
One story I love is Micheal Dell posting in a forum where people were having troubles with their Dell PCs. That’s a great way to turn a complainer into an advocate!