Are we better at preventing or resolving complaints?

A common declaration that I hear from businesses is, “Our complaints are down by X per cent.”

Many of these businesses are impressed with their ability to resolve customer complaints quickly and even more impressed with reporting the numbers. To be fair, it is laudable when complaint rates fall and remain low. But here’s the problem. Some businesses focus on resolving complaints, rather than preventing their occurrence.

Another common declaration made by businesses is, “Please do not hesitate to call us if there is any problem.” That sounds reasonable. Yet, imagine the lasting impact if a business were to say, “Sharon or Pierre will reach out to you within 24 hours to ensure that all is well with your item or service.” This simple act may uncover some undetected challenges with the item or service, before an impairment occurs.

Complaint resolution is a lagging metric, not a leading one. A stronger decision will be to make complaint prevention the leading metric. This will require a business to create processes that flag impending trouble in its experience delivery journeys.

More specifically, it means building an interconnected framework, aligning systems across the business (eliminating silos) and maintaining vigilant oversight of customer journeys. This enables the business to take pre-emptive action at the earliest signs of impending friction, so as to stabilise processes that may be heading for trouble. It is much like tightening the leg of a chair as soon as wobbling starts to occur and not waiting until the leg breaks under pressure.

With this preventative approach, the customer remains unaware of potential issues and has no reason to experience friction, or worse, a meltdown triggered by a delivery breakdown.

Why is prevention so difficult? Businesses are often more capable of fixing impairment once it happens because the evidence is visible. They are less capable of addressing what has not yet occurred. When a customer complains about a faulty appliance, the line of investigation is clear. When a delivery item goes to the wrong address, the corrective action is obvious. But how does a business ensure that the fault in the appliance is caught before the complaint, or that the package is redirected while still in transit?

I am not suggesting miracles. I am suggesting interlocking verification systems that minimise avoidable failures, which inevitably lead to customer complaints.

The businesses that excel at preventing complaints understand that resolution is a skill, while prevention is a strategy. They adopt prevention as a business philosophy, infuse it into strategic plans and embed it into cultural behaviours. Prevention becomes a mindset that drives action to remove potential barriers before they have a chance to disable customer journeys and to threaten the stability of relationships.

In T&T, I have observed that reactive tactics, such as responding to complaints or to system breakdowns, are preferred over adopting proactive strategies. The reason is effort.

Resolution is elementary, requires less calculation and is confined to a moment, or a specific timeline. Prevention, on the other hand, demands deeper planning, cross-departmental coordination, continuous monitoring of customer journeys and attention to the most minute details of a journey. Many of the businesses in T&T have sent clear signals that attentiveness and attention to details are not considered to be critical standards of customer care.

The businesses that will command the future of customer experience will be those that invest heavily in future-proofing relationships with their customers. They will build expertise in isolating near misses as markers for predictive failures. Prevention will become a mindset that drives action to remove potential barriers before they disable customer journeys and destabilise relationships.

The future leaders in customer experience will possess a key superpower. The ability to design and sustain delivery systems that predict early warning signs of service impairment accurately, due to built-in preventative processes.

While competitors are preoccupied with metrics that matter little to customers, the leading businesses will be using their superpower to fortify customer journeys and to solidify their reputation for rarely dropping the service delivery ball.