Customer complaint gratitude

When your radar picks up grumbling about customer complaints, help your team adjust their attitude by pointing out that a customer complaint is a gift, or free consulting, that informs you of where gaps exist in your service or problems with a product.

Ask employees questions that will help them make the shift from defensiveness to gratitude:

- How could that information actually be a gift to us?

- What opportunity does that information open up to us to improve our service or product?

- What gap in our service did our customer or "consultant" just identify?

- How can we use this information to add value to our customers' experiences?

- Should we be grateful that customer took the time to let us know we have a problem? (They could have told someone else on their way to to another company and we'd still be making that mistake!)

Over time, employees will start asking these questions themselves and make the most of every communication with an unhappy customer.