What are the advantages of having a "complaint department" in my business?

Answer 1

A study performed by the Technical Assistance Research Program in Washington, DC uncovered the following startling facts about unhappy customers:
1.For big-ticket durable goods, 40% of unhappy customers will not complain
2.For medium-ticket durable goods, 50% of unhappy customers will not complain
3.For big-ticket services, 63% of unhappy customers will not complain
4.For medium-ticket services, 55% of unhappy customers will not complain.
5.If a customer is unhappy and doesn’t complain, it is very likely that they will not do business with the company again.

Another study from the Strategic Planning Institute in Cambridge, Pennsylvania revealed that of clients who register a complaint with a company, 70% will do business again with that same company if the complaint is resolved and 95% will do business again if their complaint is resolved quickly.

What this means is simple: complaints are golden! They are a golden opportunity to resolve conflict with an upset customer and to retain that customer for future business.

Think you don’t have any unhappy customers? Think again. Customers can become unhappy for a variety of reasons, and many of them are small. To further complicate things, many customers don’t like to bring up the small stuff that did not meet their expectations.

The bottom line is that an unhappy customer will do one of two things: complain or go to the competition.

There are four simple reasons to encourage unhappy customers to complain.
1.If they don’t complain, you will not know their problems and cannot fix them.
2.If one client is having a problem, it is likely that another one is having the same problem
3.If unhappy clients do not complain they simply go away
4.Unhappy clients usually tell other people about their bad experiences

In his book Get More Referrals Now, Bill Cates offers the following steps to managing complaints.
1.Say “I’m Sorry.”
2.Don’t take it personally and get defensive
3.Don’t argue.
4.Demonstrate your willingness to be involved in the problem and work hard to find a solution.
5.Establish the facts.
6.Resolve the problem quickly.
7.Thank your clients for bringing their concern to your attention.
8.Follow through and follow up

Answer 2

Most of the reason why I see why you would want a complaint department is so the people in your business will think that they are being heard and the off chance that one of the complaints will help you fix a fault in your business.

Answer 3

It depends on what business you're in. I had a sign in my shop that said:
" Helen Waite is head of our complaint department. If you have a complaint go to Helen Waite."
The plan is not to have any complaints.
A complaint department indicates that you have a lot of complaints and need to pay someone to deal with them full time.

Answer 4

Man....NEVER have a complaint department.

Have a Customer Satisfaction Department

or a Suggestion Department....

Don't just ask people "what did we do wrong" tell your customers that you really value their opinion and that you want to know from them if there are any suggestions they have about how to improve your services.

Answer 5

It will give you ideas how to improve your service....Especially if you get the same complaint over and over from your customers. In the long run it helps you see what you need to improve. It is not always complaints.

Answer 6

you'll get to know the kind of customer service your employees are providing as well as the different products that are giving your customers problems (that way you know who you need to let go and which vendors you should stop buying from). I'm sure there are other reasons, but these two seem to pop into my head. These would be the only reasons why I would stop shopping at any particular place.

: D

Answer 7

happy customers are repeat customers :-)