If a busi­ness is in­tent on build­ing cus­tomer al­le­giance, it has to stop mak­ing com­plaint res­o­lu­tion a strate­gic goal. Busi­ness­es have be­come so ob­sessed with re­solv­ing their cus­tomers’ com­plaints that they are miss­ing the big­ger is­sue - pre­vent­ing com­plaints. Many busi­ness­es fall in­to the trap of fire­fight­ing their way out of com­plaints, es­pe­cial­ly those that have be­come chron­ic. The big fail­ure here is not re­al­is­ing or ac­knowl­edg­ing that per­sis­tent and re­cur­ring com­plaints are a sig­nal of sys­temic dys­func­tion that needs cor­rec­tion at its root.

Com­plaint pre­ven­tion, on the oth­er hand, has be­come a bona fide strat­e­gy adopt­ed by those busi­ness­es that are se­ri­ous about re­mov­ing ob­sta­cles to cus­tomer hap­pi­ness. Ma­jor trans­ac­tions and in­ter­ac­tions are pres­sure test­ed to iden­ti­fy where near miss­es and ac­tu­al mis­fires can oc­cur, and mea­sures are em­bed­ded to en­sure seam­less op­er­a­tions.

Have you ever no­ticed that busi­ness­es at the top of their cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence game al­ways seem to get cus­tomer de­light right? It’s be­cause these busi­ness­es do not leave any ac­tions to chance. They el­e­vate com­plaint pre­ven­tion to a sci­ence that dis­places the re­ac­tive na­ture of res­o­lu­tion. Fore­sight is used as a tool to an­tic­i­pate and elim­i­nate jour­ney fric­tion. A ze­ro-tol­er­ance stan­dard is ap­plied to the key ar­eas where ball drop­ping is most like­ly to oc­cur and ob­struc­tions are re­moved be­fore they touch the cus­tomer.

So, what hap­pens in a busi­ness that el­e­vates com­plaint pre­ven­tion to a sci­ence?

At­ten­tive­ness be­comes a defin­ing dis­ci­pline. One of my most revered ex­pec­ta­tions when I in­ter­act with a busi­ness is the lev­el of at­ten­tive­ness that is demon­strat­ed by its em­ploy­ees and the lev­el of at­ten­tion to de­tail on its on­line por­tals. This shows that the busi­ness has walked the jour­ney through the eyes of the cus­tomer, pay­ing ex­tra at­ten­tion to po­ten­tial prob­lem points.

This walk al­lows the busi­ness to take ac­tions that will fore­stall any po­ten­tial threats that may sub­vert the cus­tomer’s right to an en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence. Con­verse­ly, ig­nor­ing this cul­tur­al dis­ci­pline robs the busi­ness of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to scale emo­tion­al cur­ren­cy that ac­crues when a cus­tomer is de­light­ed with an ex­pe­ri­ence out­come.

Now, con­sid­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion process­es. In a place like T&T, where the com­mon ver­nac­u­lar in­cludes a su­per­vi­sor or man­ag­er telling a di­rect re­port to, ‘han­dle a sit­u­a­tion’, mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion or mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of that state­ment is of­ten in­evitable. The (avoid­able) ball drop­ping that oc­curs af­fects the cus­tomer’s ex­pe­ri­ence in a neg­a­tive way. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, com­mu­ni­ca­tion mis­fires oc­cur when there is in­ac­cu­rate or in­suf­fi­cient com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In­di­vid­u­als who are in­volved in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion chain be­come guilty of com­mit­ting sins that could have been pre­vent­ed had there been clear and spe­cif­ic mes­sag­ing.

In­ad­e­quate, in­suf­fi­cient and in­ac­cu­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion ac­counts for a big slice of the prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with cus­tomer com­plaints. The ma­jor­i­ty, if not all, of these com­mu­ni­ca­tion mishaps are pre­ventable be­cause in­for­ma­tion trans­fer­ence is left to chance.

Wait­ing for a com­plaint to oc­cur, then hur­ry­ing to ap­ply a fix, is tan­ta­mount to a waste of re­sources, time, hu­man en­er­gy and tal­ent. El­e­vat­ing com­plaint pre­ven­tion to a sci­ence em­beds a cul­tur­al mind­set of re­mov­ing ob­struc­tions be­fore they oc­cur. This frees the ca­pac­i­ty of the busi­ness to fo­cus on growth that is not ham­pered by fire­fight­ing, per­sis­tent fric­tion and cus­tomer dis­plea­sure.

An­oth­er ben­e­fit to mak­ing com­plaint pre­ven­tion a busi­ness strat­e­gy is that the ser­vice de­liv­ery frame­work is placed un­der the mi­cro­scope to iden­ti­fy where points of poros­i­ty ex­ist. The ob­vi­ous out­come is the plug­ging of holes and gaps in the mod­el, so that cus­tomer al­le­giance can be built around pre­dictable suc­cess.

Cus­tomers come to know and trust the busi­ness to not dis­ap­point in meet­ing their ex­pec­ta­tions. On the part of the busi­ness, this is a sure­fire way to con­vert cus­tomer con­fi­dence in­to cur­ren­cy.

Build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for ser­vice ex­cel­lence is not rock­et sci­ence. It is sim­ply a de­sign for ex­cel­lence that places fore­sight in the space that fore­stalls fail­ure.