86 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
to give you some immediate feedback online then use it – there are
several survey companies online that will do this for you at a very
reasonable cost.
Consider the questions you should ask. As mentioned above, go
out of your way to ask as few questions as possible. Here are the most
important minimum ones to include:
How would you rate the quality of the products or services you have
bought?
How would you rate the overall experience of dealing with us?
Would you use us again?
How many people have you spoken to about us in positive terms?
How many people have you spoken to about us negatively?
Can you think of anything we could do to improve?
(The above is not intended to be a model template for you to use as a
feedback questionnaire. It is merely a list of some of the most important
things to include. You should tailor the wording of your questions to be
appropriate to your customer base and market sector.)
Deal with complaints well when they do arise
Here is a fact of being in business: you will get complaints. Simply accept
the fact that from time to time things will go wrong and therefore you need
a strategy to deal with such situations when the inevitable happens. Most
companies think of any complaints handling process they have – some
like to call it ‘customer relations’ – as a purely administrative function, one
that drains resources and contributes little. If this is you, then it is time for
a re-think.
Complaints can and should play an integral role in business development.
Look at it this way, in most cases there are only two possibilities: either the
customer or client has a genuine and perfectly valid complaint or problem,
or they think they do. In either event, you have a problem that needs to
be dealt with and that problem is not an administrative one. It is a massive
business development issue!
Many businesses tell me, ‘We’re lucky, we don’t get many complaints,’ and see
this fact as a reection of the success of their product or service offering.
This notion is far from the truth. You probably don’t know how many
dissatised customers you have because whether you sell to individual
consumers or to other businesses, a huge number of dissatised customers
6
Priority 2 – Develop more business from existing customers and clients 87
simply do not complain at all. Extensive and detailed research carried out
by TARP (Technical Assistance Research Programs), the world’s leading
international research organisation specialising in customer service and
complaints, reveals that:
only 1–5 per cent of consumers complain to management or
headquarters;
45per cent of consumers complain to a front line representative and
75 per cent in business-to-business (B2B) transactions complain to
someone on the front line;
50percent of consumers encounter a problem but don’t complain at
all and 25percent in B2B don’t complain at all.
The bottom line, therefore, is that you can assume that for every complaint
you receive, there are many others you never hear about. Doubt this? How
often have you been in a restaurant and been unhappy with something
but not complained? Even if you have said something, how often have
you ever formally written or spoken to senior management or in the case
of a nationwide brand written to headquarters? You may have talked about
doing so, but often simply not got around to it. So how easy is it do you
think for senior managers to really know what is happening day-to-day
in their business, especially about the things that are dissatisfying their
customers?
Why is all this a business development issue? Three simple reasons.
Dissatised customers or clients:
may stop buying from you altogether;
may stop recommending you to others;
will almost certainly spread negative word-of-mouth.
Additional research by TARP shows that a negative experience causes two to
four times as much word-of-mouth as a positive experience. Given that for
most organisations at least 25percent of new business is driven by word-
of-mouth, any unknown and unresolved dissatisfaction can be expensive.
Very expensive. Even more so in certain sectors where some businesses get
as much as 75percent of their business from word-of-mouth.
One other fact to take into account. John Goodman of TARP, the ‘guru’ on
this topic, has coined the expression ‘word of mouse’. John has identied
the fact that word-of-mouth on the web (word of mouse) is usually four
times as great if it is negative, causing even greater damage.
88 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
So what happens if you can nd out about problems and then resolve
them to the customer’s or client’s satisfaction? More TARP research among
thousands of businesses from a massive range of sectors over many years
has revealed that:
soliciting and satisfying a complaint usually results in a 50 per cent
increase in loyalty v. the unarticulated complaint;
moving a complainant from dissatised to completely satised raises
loyalty by 30–50 per cent and produces signicant positive word-of-
mouth referrals – the source of 25–75percent of new customers;
customers who complain and are subsequently satised are up to
8percent more loyal than if they had never had a problem at all.
In practice, therefore, what all this means is that complaints handling is an
important business development tool. With this in mind here are a few tips
relating to complaints.
TIPS FOR DEALING WITH COMPLAINTS
Actively seek out and solicit complaints and feedback to identify which areas of
your activity people are unhappy about. There is even research to support the
fact that merely giving people a chance to get things off their chest increases
business retention.
Reduce and minimise the number of complaints in the future by actively listening
to your customer or client feedback.
Always assume initially that the customer is honest, right and acting in good faith.
Always listen and let dissatised customers have their ‘say’.
Go the extra mile to deal with complaints, to show how seriously you take them.
For example, get someone at the most senior level to call the complainant.
Apologise as often as you can. Even if you think the complainant is in the wrong,
it is easy to say, ‘I’m sorry you feel the way you do.’
Always be respectful and never, ever be aggressive, minimise or ignore the
importance of the complaint to the customer, even if it seems trivial. However
minor it might appear, it is important to them. By way of example, I know of a
professional services rm which aggressively dug its heels in over an individual
complaint involving a small sum of money. Eventually, the unhappy client wrote to
the papers. The report led to many others coming forward with a similar complaint
about the same organisation. This led to the professional body getting involved
with disciplinary investigations and procedures. The result . . . some of the senior
people in that organisation being suspended from practising. All because they
mismanaged the complaint at the outset.
Align with dissatised customers. Show them you understand how they feel.
Ask unhappy customers and clients what they would like you to do about the
problem.
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