Does anyone have any statistics which support the need for effective complaints handling. For example what percentage of customers or clients will leave an organisation due to incompetency or indifference of staff when dealing with complaints? Or, to what extent can we quantify and increase in profits as a result of effective complaint handling? Or any other interesting stat along these lines would be gratefully received. Many thanks
Alistair Gordon
4 Responses
Complaint statistics
Don’t know where I got this. It is a direct quote from an article by Bill Lee at Lee Resource Inc,
For every customer who bothers to complain, 26 other customers remain silent.
The average “wronged customer” will tell 8-l6 people about it. Over 20% will tell more than 20.
Ninety-one percent of unhappy customers never will willingly do business with you again.
It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an established one
If you make an effort to remedy customer complaints, 82-95% of them will support you.
Customer Complaints
I draw heavily on various academic and practical reference books,the most notable for your purposes being
FINDING the profit in customer satisfaction.Tangible methods linked to abstract concepts.Loaded with figures.J Barsky. ISBN 0 8092 2843 2
REAL WORLD CUSTOMER SERVICE – B Johnston. ISBN 1 57071 063 5
I concur absolutely with previous respondents. You might like also to conduct an exercise into the DIRECT and INDIRECT costs of getting it wrong coupled with the OPPORTUNITY COSTS.
The two books above are available in Watersones.I paid about a tenner each
Good luck
William
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Customer complaints & service
You may also like to conduct a survey to establish for yourself how effective your customer services/care departments are. I rather suspect what you will find is a poor response due to the indifference of staff in such departments to put things right to the customer’s satisfaction. It has also been said that what wronged customers want is an apology without the hassle and aggravation of having to go through complaints procedures which defend the organisation’s conduct or more to the point misconduct. I can not suggest any other statistical sources right now but will happily discuss the subject in more depth if you want because the area is one in which I happen to have substantial experience.
Kind regards
Wendy Stern
Download this free book summary
Alistair,
Customer complaints are such a rich source or REAL feedback on how an organisation is really doing.
I suggest you start with downloading the book summary of ‘A complaint is a gift’ from my website http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk …this is the richest source of ideas I have found on this prickly topic!
Good luck
Andrew Gibbons