THE CUSTOMER’S COMPLAINT THAT WRECKED HAVOC ON SALES OF A CAR BRAND.

Harvard Business Review came out with the following disturbing, yet interesting statistics on Customers’ Complaint thus:

1. A typical business hears from only 4% of its dissatisfied customers. The other 96% just quietly go away and 91% never come back.
2. A typical dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about the problem.
3. 1 in every 5 will tell 20.
4. It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for one negative incident.

The Report went further to give a result of a survey of why customers quit and stop patronizing products, businesses and services from service providers, thus:

• 3% move away to other locations.
• 5% develop other friendships.
• 9% leave for competitive reasons.
• 14% are dissatisfied with the products.
• 68% quit because of an attitude of indifference towards the customer by the owner, manager, or some employee.

As though this was not bad enough, showcasing the impact of poor and bad customer service, an Author, Unknown came up with a very mind throbbing piece tagged:

ARE “NICE CUSTOMERS” RUINING YOUR BUSINESS?

“I’m a nice customer. You all know me. I’m the one who never complains, no matter what kind of service I get. I’ll go into a restaurant and sit quietly while the waiters and waitresses’ gossip and never bother to ask if anyone has taken my order. Sometimes, a party that came in after I did, gets my order, but I don’t complain. I just wait. And when I go to a store to buy something, I don’t throw my weight around. I try to be thoughtful of the other person. If a snooty salesperson gets upset because I want to look at several things before making up my mind, I’m just as polite as can be. I don’t believe rudeness in return is the answer.

The other day I stopped at a full-service gas station and waited for almost five minutes before the attendant took care of me. And when he did, he spilled gas and wiped the windshield with an oily rag. But did I complain about the service? Of course not. I never kick. I never nag. I never criticize. And I wouldn’t dream of making a scene, as I’ve seen some people do in public places. I think that’s uncalled for. No. I’m the nice customer. And I’ll tell you who else I am. I’m the customer who never comes back!

When I get pushed too far, I just take my business down the street to places where they’re smart enough to hire and train people who appreciate nice customers, just like me, who can put anyone out of business. I laugh when I see you frantically spending your money on expensive advertising to get me back, when you could have kept me with a few kind words, a smile, and some good service.

I don’t care what business you’re in. Maybe you live in a different town; maybe I’ve never heard of you. But, if you’re broke or your business is bad, maybe there are enough people like me who do know you.

I’m your customer who never comes back”. – Author: Unknown.

It is worrisome that businesses and service providers have not noticed that there is a paradigm shift in customer care and services. Customers just take their businesses next door. Interestingly, most service providers do not notice that their businesses are on a downward slope, until they eventually close shop.

Notice that two banks maybe side by side each other. One bank has little or no activities while the other bank is busting with banking activities. Sometimes, customers even park their cars at the bank with no activities, pay the security guard some money and go over to the other bank to transact. The management sees this and have not stopped in their tracks to ask what they are doing wrongly.

This is perhaps where the following slogans came from…

Americans: “The Customer is always right”.

British: “The Customer is king”.

Japanese: “The Customer is god, give him what he wants.”

Nigerian: “Don’t worry, I will help you”.

It is only when we practicalize these slogans in our businesses will we begin to experience the sort of profit margins that befit our businesses. Gone are the days when service providers assume that profit margins come about by sacrificing customer care on the altar of high sales turnover because, it is excellent customer service that drives high turnover of sales and in essence, high profit margins.

Perhaps the best definition of a customer was given by Mahatma Gandi thus:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so”.

This was the challenge a franchisee car company had in Nigeria. They could not explain it, but their best car brand which they thought would make a very big bang sale was not trending.

After a few sales, the demand for the brand of car tanked. Customers were not buying or asking for the car brand anymore. They had a glut of these cars in their showroom and they had ordered/ imported some more, because they compared the demand for it in Europe to what would obtain locally and they were shocked that the sales of the car brand locally, was abysmal.

It was at this time that the services of a Customers’ Ombudsman became necessary. This is because, despite having Customer Care Department, HR, After Sales Service Department, Compliance Department, Legal Department, Operations Department and more, something was still missing. They could not explain why their sales were dipping for this flagship brand of cars.

The Customer’s Ombudsman is a smoke detector, he uses the mechanism of EDR (Early Dispute Resolution) to resolve complaints. He applies the principles of natural justice, equity and good conscience to mediating fair settlement to resolve complaints, disputes and conflicts. He always strives for a Win:Win Situation which is the hallmark of being an Ombudsman. No victor no vanquish. He looks for the ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement) between the parties and encourages both parties to make compromises to meet each other halfway. This always works.

He is wired differently. Even though he is in the service of an organization, his balance of fairness and equity allows him to tell the organization he is serving where they have gone wrong. No other employee can do this without risking their job.

The Customer’s Ombudsman usually reports directly to the Managing Director and perhaps the only one that can have a balanced report by pointing out the flaws in providing services. Most importantly, customers tend to trust him overtime and can vent, lodge their complaint with the Ombudsman knowing that it would be resolved dispassionately.

After several meetings the Management still could not fathom why the sales of their choicest brand of cars was still dipping, but the Ombudsman did in a matter of moments.

In the cause of due diligence, the Customer’s Ombudsman ran a random search on the internet on “Customer’s Complaints” against the organization, just to know how the organization faired in terms of handling customer’s complaint and the internet churned out a very damaging story covered by the print media and splashed on the internet about six (6) years back.

This newspaper report was on the internet for years and the organization still could not draw a nexus between that newspaper report and the poor sales outing of the car brand.

The Newspaper Report ran a story that a customer had bought this new car brand and not quite 6 months, she complained that the vehicle would freeze in motion and shut down the engine and all the gadgets in the car will shut down all by itself.

This was happening very frequently; it was becoming not just embarrassing, but dangerous to the live of the driver and other road users. Imagine a car in motion doing perhaps over 100km/ hour, and all of a sudden, the engine cuts out power by itself and the car jerks to an abrupt stop! It could happen at any time and no warning to the driver of the car. Another car coming behind it, could ram into the car that stopped suddenly because it gave no warning that it was stopping.

The customer reported this to the car company, but the customer care was, over time very shoddy to say the least in handling the complaint. It was difficult to give the customer an alternative vehicle and in spite of changing so many parts, which took months (due to importation of parts), there was no improvement. The car still shut down at top speed in the middle of the road.

The patient customer got passed around from sales to customer care to mechanics to management with no resolution in sight. After a while, the entire establishment got fed-up of the customer and started avoiding her calls. They shut her out, even when her car was malfunctioning.

At some point they told her they would have to ship the vehicle back to the manufacturers and said little or nothing about time frame and or replacement of the car.

It was when the customer got fed up of the stories with no resolution in sight, that she lodged the complaint with the print media, who might have been seeking such a sensational story to hit the airwaves. The story was splashed everywhere possible and it had a rippling and damaging effect which the car company had not realized, yet.

It was such a damaging story that other print media waded in on it and also published similar and follow-up stories to that first report.

The damage to this car brand, was that it was still new in the market, and most people go to the internet to run inquiries of things that they had little or no knowledge of. Even when they know, people still run inquiries to see how other customers’ experiences and feedback would turn out on their prospective choices, because as we say; “experience is the best teacher”. People also ran internet inquiry because they wanted an upgrade of the previous cars they had and the felt the internet was the only public space to run that inquiry.

They ask goggle, because goggle is their friend. Anyone with a good or bad experience, somehow splashes it on social media and overtime, the algorithm of goggle search engine would pick it up.

So, each time there was an inquiry regarding complaint on this new brand of cars or anyone just typed in a search on that brand of car, what pops up first, is this customer complaint, with the gory tale of what happened to this lady customer.

Virtually every reader synthetized with her and could relate to the story, but what the car company did not realize, was that customers perhaps were in solidary with this customer’s complaint and or, they did not want to be the next victim, to buy a car that expensive and to have this sort of experience. Each time this search is run on goggle, the CEO of the company’s photograph, who is the face of the brand pops-up and anyone seeing that would want to read the damaging report.

It was when the Customer’s Ombudsman pointed out the existent of that complaint on the internet a nexus was drawn between the complaint, the publication and the poor sales of the car brand.

Interestingly, that complaint since the newspaper publication of June 2013, is still on the internet, like an indelible ink. There was no rebuttal or follow-up story showing that, perhaps the customer had been appeased or was now satisfied with the after sales services.

It is instructive to note that most service providers do not yet realize the functions and importance of the services of the Customer’s Ombudsman. Most organizations shy away from customers’ complaints, rather than welcome it, not realizing that only 4% of customers come back to lodge complaint/ feedback of dissatisfied services.

They do not realize that the complaining customers are giving them a second chance to right a wrong from the first impression, which is golden. They do not realize that most times, one does not have a second chance to correct a wrong impression, but these 4% complaining customers are giving them that opportunity, but they throw it away. Rather, the organizations try to justify their services and they often go into a debate with the customer to vindicate their products, goods and services because they think it is only right to defend their brands.

This leaves dissatisfied customers with no recourse other than to seek redress by telling the whole world and some even file court actions against the organizations. Some organizations still do not give this a wink, because they assume that their brand is too big to be concerned about one disgruntled customer. They end up with so much contingent liabilities that affect their financial reports, because they must make provisions for contingent liabilities whether or not these contingent liabilities crystalize.

This single customer’s complaint is like a little chop from an axe on wood. It makes a little mark that can be ignored. Another customer gives it another chop, and another chop and yet another chop and gradually the mark becomes indelible and if the organization is still standing, it may just be a shell of itself.

On the flip side, an organization that pays attention to customers’ complaints acknowledges that human errors exist and people can err and make mistakes in the course of service. It is how they resolve these complaints with the customers that leads to retention.

Uwem Akangson is a Customer’s Ombudsman, a Member of the International Ombudsman Association, (IOA) USA, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, (ACIArb) UK, an Alumni of the Harvard Business School (HBS) & a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) Nigeria.