What do customers want when they complain?

Yesterday’s post by Dan (A cautionary tale about ISP Customer Care – the power of negative word of mouth) is not untypical of the frustration felt by literally hundreds and thousands of consumers across the country.

We’ve mentioned before that we conduct the annual UK customer care study for the Customer Care Alliance. This deals specifically with how organisations respond to consumers with problems.  Such situations provide an ideal opportunity to restore and often enhance confidence in the organisation at fault but sadly performance is typically weak.

Our last study, published in 2008, reflecting the feedback of over 10,000 consumers, found that only 10% were completely satisfied with the way their most serious problem had been handled and only 13% felt that they had been treated fairly. Many only wanted an apology or an explanation but did not get one:

• 40% of contactors (those who contacted the organisation responsible for their problem) wanted an apology but only 20% got one
• 40% of contactors wanted an explanation but only 14% got one
• 29% wanted an assurance that the problem would not be repeated but only 5% got one
• 33% felt they got nothing in response to their contact

As can be seen from Dan’s post, an apology and an explanation might have gone a long way to restoring his confidence (although in this case he was already less than happy with the Company responsible) but their lack of attention has resulted in significant negative word of mouth. Dan is the technical guru for many such as myself and we rely on him for technical advice and now know of one domain name supplier to steer well clear of.

I have said this time and again but will repeat again – businesses that ignore and/or mistreat their existing customers are missing an important business strategy. Looking after existing customers well maintains confidence, boosts their loyalty, encourages cross-selling and upselling opportunities and develops positive word of mouth advertising to potential new customers. The opposite will eventually lead to lost customers, immediately curtail potential cross and upselling opportunities and increase negative word of mouth advertising!

For some reason the handling of complaints is still often seen as a negative business activity and is frequently under-resourced. All it needs is a small percentage of the marketing budget allocated to customer aquisition to be redirected to customer retention. This chart from our last research report sums it all up:

Completely satisfy a customer who had a problem and their loyalty and willingness to recommend is considerably higher than just mollifying them and if you leave them still completely dissatisfied, whilst it might not be easy for them to immediately defect (and ISP’s are an example of this) they will when they can and more importantly, will go out of their way to warn others off.