Complaints –They’re better than Compliments

Pure creative genius is one method of generating ideas for new products and new businesses. Another way is listening to complaints.

If you already have a product or service that customers are using you should be getting complaints. It might be about the product itself or how your salespeople are dressed. In any case, complaints are the best way to find what needs to be improved. If you are not getting complaints then either you are not taking enough risks or you are too isolated from your clients.

Top management must be in touch with the 'help desk' department. This must be more than knowing that the average call was answered within 4 minutes and that 87% of calls are resolved within one day. Since each call is a direct cost to you and to your customer you want the department to function as efficiently as possible. However, the real value of the 'help desk' department is determining your business priorities. It provides the best market research you can get. If you use a focus group, you are more likely to get compliments than complaints. A compliment tells you what you are already doing right. If everything stays the same then compliments are enough. In a constantly changing world, your company will fail without constant improvement. You need complaints.

Don't ignore complaints that are not about your company. It might be about the shipping company you use or completely unrelated to what you currently sell. In either case, it is a flag. You might need to find a different shipper or perhaps extend your product offing.

There is another side of complaints-yours. My readership has been expanding but I will assume you are a human being living on earth. Therefore, you complain. This is also an excellent source of new ideas.

Every time I had to move a clients computer I complained (to myself) about all the post-it notes stuck on the monitor. I finally created a place in my software for miscellaneous notes. Clients said it was one of the most useful features in the software. The software change took less than a half hour but several years to see the need.

Be careful of the 'if only' complaint. If only I had more resources, completed my degree, had better staff, had a better childhood, or still had all my hair then I could _______. Everyone else has the same or similar limitations. Instead of using these complaints as reasons not to do something, acknowledge the limits and work harder to compensate. For a different approach you may want to read 'How to Build a Time Machine' by Paul Davis.

Go To Page: 1 2