6
A Complaining
Customer Is Your
Best Friend
One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relation-
ship with a customer is the absence of complaints.
Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an ex-
tended period of time. The customer is either not being
candid or not being contacted.
—Theodore Levitt
Business School Professor, Harvard University
As a manager it can be easy to subscribe to “no news is good
news” thinking when it comes to your staff’s service perfor-
mance. You work diligently to ensure your people have the
right training, coaching, and technology to give customers
their best every day, and you see firsthand much of the good
work they do to solve vexing problems and address tough
questions. When customer satisfaction reports turn ...