Using complaints to your advantage

For many companies, to hear complaints from customers is an ordeal.

What they're complaining now? Can we do something?

If not managed correctly they can bring down the morale of its employees, who begin to change negative feelings to customers, generating more complaints. A vicious cycle.

So, how companies should deal with these issues? They must learn to embrace the complaints, bring them to light and use them in a positive way to encourage change and improve the production process.

There is a very popular service in the United States called Yelp. On this site, a sort of social network for recommendations of sites (a similar one in Portuguese would be the Qype ), people share their experiences as consumers. There are thousands of people sharing their impressions of countless. Obviously there are a lot of complaints about any type of service.

Earlier this year, Boing Boing published an article showing a pizzeria that took some of the worst ratings of the site, shirts stamped with them and gave its employees to use it.

But what is the advantage to cater to consumers using a shirt that says, "This place sucks"? Reason with me:

Fact 1: On sites like these, most people do not get to work (or not even) to write a critique realmete relevant;

Fact 2: Whenever someone gets angry and you mess around, the sacanagens increase;

Fact 3: If you show does not give a damn about what they are talking about you, people stop talking;

Fact 4: If you use the negative feedback (remember the 'show' in Fact 3?) As a basis for correcting any deviations or improve its products, you earn respect.

By stamping on T-shirts lowest grades they have earned, the managers at Pizzeria Delfina could show the public who care about what they say and in return, the audience gave them a chance to prove that the reality is quite different and the service is good. On Yelp, searches for the pizzeria and the increased number of positive recommendations jumped, proving that by failing to escape the bad comments and take action to improve customer service, companies have much to gain.