Every good manufacturer has a system to
log and monitor all product complaints and ensure that these are speedily
attended and subsequently analysed for any improvements. It is a normal practice to register all
incoming customer complaints and attend those at the earliest. Reports generated for number of complaints
received, for different products, from different areas, at different times of
the year, with nature of complaints, and how quickly these are attended. There are reports about nature of faults,
with fault analysis, and response time measurement etc.
Here, we always miss out a possibility
of non-received complaints. There is no
exact channel made available to find out those complaints. Number of such complaints that are not
recorded or not received, or not registered or cannot be registered, may vary
from product to product and from industry to industry. However, ignoring this, and deriving
conclusions only from available data may not give correct picture. It will be incorrect to form a opinion about
product performance based on ‘sample data’!
This is because absence of customer
complaints, does not mean, there are no complaints at all. Or it does not mean that a customer is
happy. Because complaints are a very
significant indicator of customer satisfaction and inaccurate data related to
number, type, intensity and urgency of complaints can be critical factors.
Why Customers avoid to make
Complaints?
1.
Customer cannot complain,
because we never ask.
2.
Company discourages customer
complaints.
3.
Proper platform not available
to facilitate customer to register a complaint.
4.
There are no resources to
receive complaints
5.
Complaint registration process
is complicated
6.
Customer complaint mechanism is
designed to prove that its customer’s fault.
7.
Customer is unaware of channel
for complaining
8.
Process (online form or
customer care number) does not clearly define it.
9.
Negative experience of earlier
reported complaint
10.
Some customers feel,
complaining is causing trouble or botheration
11.
Happy customer does not
complain for fear of eroding relations
12.
Product price is not worth
spending time in complaining
How many complaints are not reported?
It’s not very easy to find out exact
number of unreported complaints. The
figures would vary depending upon product type, customer strata, culture,
country, legal mechanism etc. However,
generally, it is said that over 95% of complaints are never reported and 90% of
those customers will simply leave and will never come back. Now that is a very big number!
Effect on Business
It needs no great wisdom to tell that
unhappy customers affect business seriously.
If a happy customer is a good advertisement of company’s product,
unhappy customers can spoil your marketing seriously. Most of them will talk about it to at least
10 other people. Over 13% of unhappy customers will tell at least another 20
people about it! The results are –
create bad reputation of company and brand, erode customer loyalty, drop in
business, shifting customers to competition.
Can we do something about it?
If our business cannot afford ignoring
customer complaints, here is a list of actions that we should incorporate in
our company to catch nearly all complaints.
1.
Set up a very easy,
convenient and multiple mechanisms for registering customer complaints.
‘Feedback’
tab on your website can be converted to ‘Customer Complaints’. Travelling sales employees can be trained to
catch customer complaints. Service
employees, installation team, customer care, can have this as additional
task. In your exhibition booth, you can
think of having a customer support desk!
2.
If such a system is
already existing, just make it still simpler.
There is no
alternative to it. Most times,
complaints forms are too lengthy and asking too many details. Most of these can be skipped upfront. Only those enough for contacting client and
enquiring about exact problem can improve complaints inflow significantly. (for
example, ‘when purchased’ is essential for us, but most annoying to
remember. We can have other means to
find it out, may be by model serial number).
3.
Your complaint mechanism
should not attempt to prove that customer made mistakes.
We can avoid
interrogation about how the problem occurred and what are site conditions. This anyway, our smart service employee will
know in due course.
4.
Attend the complaint first
and then call for more details and analysis.
It is always
a matter of great satisfaction, when a patient is first taken to ICU and
medication is started. The registration
formalities can happen alongside. Do we
move only when all data that we require is received from the client?
5.
Must remember that customer
complains because he has problem.
Like us,
Customers are busy too. They really have
no time to play around and throw complaints on us. Our policy needs to define that every
complaint is a genuine one and needs attention.
6.
Need to play a fair game
while attending a complaint.
We do not
have to give excuse or invalid reasons to a customer if we are late to attend
to him. Also, it is not good to advise
him that he should have chosen a different product, or he now needs to replace
this product with a still better one, instead of troubleshooting the faulty
product. Customers are clever enough to
understand all this and can think twice before complaining next time (and also
while making a next purchase)!
7.
Customer expects solution at
his expected time, not at our possible time.
How long we
can make a customer to wait whose TV is not working and he may miss to watch a
World Cup match, or how long we can make someone to wait when internet in his
office has a problem and all his 20-25 employees cannot do any work? Can a
doctor decide to attend a patient only when he is free from his other
priorities? We can have planning and
delivery schedule for sales orders, but there is no place for ‘scheduling’ complaints.
8.
Improve your system for
speedy redressal of complaints.
Entire chain
of complaints handling which starts from mechanism to receive a complaint,
transferring it to the concerned employee, ensuring that he attends it without
delay, and really attending the complaint to resolve it, can have some
stumbling blocks that add to delays.
Response time measurement should be for each of these areas rather than
only for service employee.
9.
Use Complaints analysis
to internal corrective actions.
Analysis of
complaints can reveal many surprises. Not
necessarily only product improvements, or quality improvements are always
reasons for product problems. For one
consumer products company, just improvising on User Manual reduced complaints
by nearly 15%. Areas like, good
marketing documentation to help customer in selecting a correct product, proper
advice during sales and installation, and improvements in packaging &
transportation, can bring astonishing good results. Product training programmes, and technical
workshops, webinars play a very good role in all these areas.
If we record all possible complaints,
and ensure to attend those on priority, it will eventually result in reduction
of customer complaints. Because
corrective actions taken on the basis of complaints analysis, can eventually
bring down number of complaints. Every
good manufacturer naturally expects this to happen.
