Zingerman’s Delicatessen opened in Ann Arbor, MI in 1982. Not only has the original business been a great success, they’ve added additional profit centers including ZingTrain, which conducts seminars based on things they’ve learned in creating a successful business. Here’s what they have to say about how to deal with complaints.
We’ve been teaching Zingerman’s 5 Steps to Effectively Handling Complaints for about 20 years now, and it’s a recipe that works—both for us and for the many other organizations that have adopted (or adapted) it for their own use. Just in case you haven’t memorized our recipe, I’ll recap it here:
- Acknowledge the complaint. When people complain, more than anything else, they want to be heard. If they know we’re listening, their stress level goes down—and so does ours.
- Sincerely apologize. We don’t need to know exactly what happened in order to apologize. If someone is complaining, we know that they didn’t have the great experience that we wanted them to have, so we apologize. Because regardless of what happened, we are truly sorry that they are dissatisfied. This is not the place for excuses, jokes or explanations. Just genuine remorse.
- Make it right. Research shows that customer satisfaction and loyalty are significantly higher when a complaint can be resolved on the first contact. So at Zingerman’s we authorize our staff to do whatever it takes to make things right for the customer. Usually the employee knows what needs to be done, and we want them to take action. If they need to ask for help, that’s OK—but we request that they become the customer’s advocate and explain the situation to the supervisor or manager, so that the customer doesn’t have to repeat his story over and over.
- Say thanks. As the research shows, at least half of the time people don’t complain—and don’t give us the chance to resolve the problem. So we do really appreciate those who let us know what’s going on and have faith that we’ll take care of them.
- Write it up. It’s easy to react emotionally to complaints and be tempted to change products, systems or processes in reaction to the most vocal complainers. But when we document complaints in a way that allows us to collect some objective data, we often get a different picture of where to focus organizational time and resources. Although we want our customers to let us know when there’s a problem, we also want to fix recurring problems—and eliminate the mistakes that are leading to complaints. Zingerman’s form for documenting complaints is called a Code Red. We’ve been using a paper version for years and are in the process of phasing in an electronic option as well.
I would like to suggest that there has never been a better time to make sure that we—and everyone we work with—are doing a great job of handling complaints. Complaints about our service and our products, of course, but also complaints about the unfairness of life—losing jobs, increased financial pressures, the energy that’s being channeled into just getting by.
We say that Zingerman’s Recipe for Handling Complaints works for complaints of any kind. So I’ve been thinking about using it in the context of customers, friends and colleagues who complain about life’s hardships and realizing that none of us—or our staff—are immune from those hardships ourselves. So the chance that we’ll react negatively to someone unloading on us—that we’ll find ourselves in that “this isn’t fair” frame of mind—is higher than it might have been a year ago. Which is all the more reason to actively review, teach and use these 5 Steps!
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