community mook

See the complaints department

So we’re all used to this kind of treatment. At some point in our lives, we’ve been on the receiving end of a customer service representative who wasn’t able to support our needs. Perhaps they were unsure of the product or service. Perhaps they were having a bad day. Perhaps they were underqualified. I could go on with excuses or projections but at the end of it all, you were not happy in the least I’m sure.

The Wall St Journal just posted an article titled “Making the Most of Customer Complaints” which examines how businesses do very little to address the problem but continue to admit mistakes, offer coupons, replacement items or engage in any sort of behaviours with don’t focus on the root of why the problem occured in the first place. The journalist posits that

“What businesses should be doing is looking at service recovery as a mission that involves three stakeholders: customers who want their complaints resolved; managers in charge of the process of addressing those concerns; and the frontline employees who deal with the customers. All three need to be integrated into addressing and fixing service problems.”

In community, much of the same is true. There is a need to be syncronized in the flow of communication which takes place within and exterior to the organization. If you are promising more than you can deliver (affectionately known as ‘writing the checks that your @$$ can’t cash)- then you really have to do things differently and engage in some serious soul searching.

Why are you working on the project you are on? Are you developing more clutter? Do you feel the fire in the belly for your product / service?

Life’s too short to be complaining.