I have just published the last (at least for now) article on complaints:  13 Ideas to Make Your Business More Complaint Friendly. In the article I came up with a number of ways to set your business up for success from both an operational point of view as well as a process one.

But I still have a ton of questions and thoughts that are half formed and I would love your ideas*.

In this post I categorized ideas that would help a business think differently about about complaints at a baked in level, at the core of the business. My sense is that if isn’t systematized in a meaningful way resolution won’t happen consistently or in the business’s favor. Here’s how I broke it down:

Be ready to handle complaints

Make it easy to complain

Welcome complaints when they do come

Resolve complaints quickly

Some of the questions that I have:
How do you calculate the “ROI” of complaint resolution?
Why do more businesses not have better systems in place?
Can process define success or is attitude the main issue?
What are some more ideas to make complaining easy?
Why don’t more customers complain?
When do you just have to tell the customer to take a hike?
How do you tell a customer to take a hike?
Are there common scenarios that need a different type of process?

And stories. Bring me your stories:
Do you have anecdotes of complaint resolution going really well?
Really poorly?
Of businesses that get it?
Of those that don’t?
Of complaints that turned into reviews and worse?

*As always I don’t have much to offer in return… just links. I realized in writing this that I am what you might consider the opposite of a link junkie. I want to give them out as liberally as I can in return for conversation and learning. I don’t really care if I ever get one, although I have gotten a few over the years and I would like to share the “wealth”. I am a learning junky. Help me learn, get a link or three, lets talk.