Complaint Management Excellence

Cook, a customer service consultant and author, provides advice, tools, and techniques for managers to use to deal with complaints. She argues that complaints should be seen as an opportunity to put things right, improving the long-term prospects of the company by increasing customer service and enhancing products and services while improving employee morale and engagement. She describes the factors that are changing customer expectations and impacts on satisfaction and complaints, risks associated with handling complaints badly, and how to encourage and respond to them (including through social media), and act on customer feedback to ensure ongoing improvement. She details the priorities for customers when they complain; financial compensation and other forms of redress; customer management strategy and implementation; communication styles and emotional intelligence; the skills and behaviors needed for dealing with complaints; recording and investigating them; conciliation, mediation, and arbitration; making improvements as a result; creating an environment that promotes high performance; and complaint handling and culture change. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)