How to Reduce Customer Complaints!

Uploaded by takomabibelot

 I’ve seen this technique growing over the years.  The surefire way to reduce customer complaints is to make it impossible to complain.  I first experienced this on an international flight.  When everyone got off the plane, there was no one there. 

Just the other day I called a company about a small problem and they put me in the cue.  The recorded message said, all I’d have to do is wait 30 to 60 minutes for the next agent.

There are others where the only place you can get information is on their website, but if it’s not there it just keeps recycling you back to the home page.

What’s nice about this approach is you can show upper management a proven reduction in customer complaints.  “We must be doing something right.  Nobody’s complaining.”

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Stuffing the Goose

originally uploaded by Nathan Berry.

Stuffing the Goose is a technical education term. What it refers to is two situations. First, it means adding as much or more content as you can. You don’t want to leave anything out. When you review the design, everyone wants to add things until you have no time to actually work on anything.

Second, it happens when you bring people in for something like three days. The thinking is, “since we have you here, let’s cover everything.” How can we put two weeks of content into one week?

This is a natural tendency. It’s hard to fight. But some of the worst education and training has been stuffed. So focus on your objectives and tell others to stop stuffing the goose.

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Thriving on Chaos – The Road to Creativity

Recently I had an opportunity to lead a number of process improvement sessions.  One of the things that’s challenging is that it’s really a divergent/convergent process.  By divergent I’m mean that early on the discussion is expansive with a lot of options.  Later on as decisions are made the process is convergent leading to closure. 

As a facilitator, it’s important to allow the early chaos to happen because that’s part of the creative process.  I continuously remind everyone that this is a normal part of the process and everything will come into focus as we go along.  A lot of people are uncomfortable with this messy state of affairs and try too soon to organize things or cut off discussion.  You just have to push back and tell people to be patient.  I use parking lots to help record all those ideas that we won’t be dealing with in order to keep some focus to the discussion.

I also let people know when we are shifting gears and going into the decison making phase.  That’s the point were judgements are appropriate and necessary.  I find that when I train others on this type of faciliation that they have to see this happen at least once to fully appreciate what really happens.

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Developing Consulting Skills

One of the great challenges in working on training or any other kind of major initiatives is how to build support and consensus while leading to a successful conclution.  That’s where good consulting skills come in. 

As a side not, I had a discussion the other day about the difference between consultative selling and consulting.  Consultative selling is a style of selling where you identify customer needs, issues and problems and then present an appropriate solution.  In consulting, you’re taking customers through a displined process or problem solving while applying your expertise.  In consulting, you are often the product or service.

Here’s probably the best book to start with Peter Blocks, Flawless Consulting, a guide to getting your expertise used.   The techniques and methodologies are good for both internal and external consulting.

  Here’s a link.

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