He is retired and kinda rich and out of touch with regular business but he shows he really knows: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Of course, we love good news. We love compliments. We love to hear how great a member of our team was. But guess what? All we do with good news is gloat; or strut; or give yourself a fist bump. The most introspective we get from good news is — our training programs are finally paying off.
But bad news? It is and must always be actionable. You will try to fix the specific problem and then determine if this is something systemic or part of your program that needs to be changed. Or, if not, can you correct the behavior of the employee, or do you change your vendor for this type product, or do you need to produce a report so you can see if this is happening too often. Or??
Complaints are hard. Unhappy customers delivering complaints are hard. As much as you want to fix the specific problem there is always a personal issue of how you handle the customer. Sometimes you can fix the problem and they are still not happy. That is the nature of our business.
What Bill Gates was talking about is: Can you learn something from this unhappy customer that will help you improve your business? Is there something you are doing wrong, in the customer’s eyes that you can change? That knowledge only comes if you are able to separate the complainer with the complaint. It demands objective introspection, not just, ‘ah she just likes to complain.’
Perhaps the easiest way to think of this is — three nos make a yes. If your sales people are asked if you carry a product type and your people say no on three different occasions, that demands that you decide if you should carry the item. If there is a customer demand, you need to know about it. It’s one thing when a rep says you should have this item; it is quite another thing when your customers believe you should. That is far more compelling.
Same with complaints about some function of your business — installation, lack of help from sales person, hours of operation, etc. Three complaints about the same issue (three nos) demands you say, “yes, we have a problem. We need to fix this.”
The fact is sales people need to have the ability to tell you when they are asked if you carry a product. You keep tally. Same with complaints; after you have fixed the problem, they need to be organized or grouped by problem so you can quickly see if you have something that needs to be changed.
Jonathan Trivers, a regular contributor to Floor Covering Weekly, is also the author of the marketWise section of FCW’s Statistical Report. He can be reached by email at jonathantrivers@gmail.com.