Part 1: Behind Every Customer Complaint, A Silver Lining

Customer complaints are a fact of business life. It doesn't matter whether you have 15 or 1,500 employees, whether you operate strictly online or with a brick-and-mortar presence, or whether your primary customers are Millennials or Baby Boomers. Ultimately, it doesn't even matter how well-crafted your products or services are. Each customer has a different perspective and varying needs, meaning that complaints are inevitable in any industry.

Beyond providing quality products or services, transparent customer service should be the next highest priority for any company. We've all experienced the "customer service wall" of certain national and multinational corporations; before you're placed on hold for 30 to 60 minutes you already know it's going to be a battle to reach any marginal solution. This experience is disheartening and inspires most of us to spread negative word-of-mouth. A positive experience, however, can turn an upset individual into the most loyal type of customer.

Researching and writing business plans at Ethos 360 grants me a distinctive point of view, as we work with businesses of all kinds and sizes. Thus, our customer base also varies a great deal. One of the most important things I've learned about doing business here is that customer complaints represent an opportunity to show your dedication and integrity, which, at the end of the day, creates clients who will promote and defend you and increases your sales. It has been said that an unhappy client who is converted into a satisfied client will become 10 times more loyal than clients who are happy to begin with.

Of course, the following guidelines must be in place before you start to take advantage of your complaints:

• Have all your cards on the table - honesty can't backfire
• Provide products or services you will readily stand by
• Be consistently open to criticism instead of deaf or defensive

At Ethos 360 we deal with bumps in the road in a variety of ways, since no two clients are exactly alike. The ability to jump into the discussion right away is ever important, as is the foresight to develop a general roadmap for these negotiations. But the road doesn't end there. Individual solutions are not islands; it must be made clear to the customer that the problem behind each complaint will be actively dealt with, preventing the same situation in the future, for them and everyone else.

Finally, although customers are typically open to compensation for errors, it is important not to overdo it. Bending over backward may not only cut into sales time, but it also may present you as unprepared, with no system in place to deal with these occasional yet unavoidable difficulties. Most customers are looking for three simple things: they want their specific problem fixed, they want to feel as if the hiccup and underlying cause are being confronted genuinely, and they want to move forward effortlessly.