4 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Handling Failures: Lessons Learned from 1,943 Customer Complaints

Imagine a 1×1 coaching session with a quality lead that wants to get better at handling customer complaints. I asked him to show me the one complaint he was proud the most to solve. A report declares that the damage for a costly and complex assembly (aerospace industry if you insist- should have met strict standardization), damaged by customer’s storage and handling, which were not in compliance with manufacturer requirements. The punch line? No handling or storage instructions for that part were defined. Not even long after this case, “closed.” I got permission to share this anecdote with you, mainly because this specific lead has impressive progress since then. Yet, it is one of the c mistakes people make when it comes to handling customer complaints. This is the reason I choose to share this piece of wisdom with you.

The novel idea of learning from failures is commonly available in the professional literature and embedded into business jargons. It is the right approach and the correct thing to say in many business situations. The phrase that I liked the most is: “thank you, dear customer, for helping us to better ourselves.” But the truth is that these nice words are not translated into actions, not embedded into the organization’s DNA, and not being followed for the long term.

How do I know? Up to date, I had the privilege to be involved in 1,943 customer complaints and failures case-studies (and keep counting) from different perspectives:

• As a customer, reviewing supplier’s root cause analyses.
• As a supplier, presenting lessons learned to customers.
• As a mentor, helping quality leaders to develop suppliers’ quality.
• As a coach for business leaders that needs to face angry customers.
• And as a masterminds trainer, allowing people to develop their problem-solving skills.

And guess what? My job is easy because people keep making the same mistakes. People from diverse backgrounds and seniority, from various industries and cultures, keep repeating these four mistakes. Eventually, shuffling your processes and tune organizational mindset is more painful than facing angry customers once in a while. Particularly true if your business situation is unique and you are confident that your customer will live with the pain caused by your quality gaps and will not look for a replacement.

Mistake no. 1: Not Reflecting Sense of Urgency. 

You might take your customer complaints very seriously, begin investigating and studying the failure as soon as you get notified about it. But it worthless if your customer doesn’t recognize these efforts. Seriously, it happed a lot. I have a pocket full of stories about a full-scope team established and budgeted to solve complex failures without notifying the customers. So Mrs. customer is sitting in her office, hear nothing from you, no updates, zero communication, and get the perception that you don’t care -while you DO.

A Wake-up call: Have your customers regularly follow up with you, asking for updates? The worst thing for your business is a situation in which your customer is chasing you with a request for updates or follow-up to remind you they expect your feedback.

Plan of Action: Reflect your customers that their complaint matters and show how it immediately affects your organization. First, acknowledge receiving the complaint and establish a schedule to resolve it. Then, update your customer regularly on breakthroughs and milestones. Make a habit of regular proactive communication with your customers on a fixed cadence. It will improve the customer experience and increase the sense of partnership with your customers and their trust – in you.

Mistake no. 2: Not Acknowledging the (Real) Problem 

Nothing is more irritating than a supplier that is doing a poor job in preventing the next crisis. It happens when you are looking at the failure on a narrow prism and ignores the bigger picture. As a result, you incorrectly identify the problem’s real causes and put a bandage to heal a deep painful wound. Think about your customer’s perspective and frustration from your overlooking what they identified in less than 1-hour discussion.

An intuitive example that comes to my mind is a supplier explaining to you a failure that happened due to vague instructions in the procedure hence interpreted differently by different operators. To solve it, the supplier showed you that they amended the procedure and solved the problem.

Really…? this example, based on real-life scenarios, lacks an in-depth view that your customer will undoubtedly challenge.

• Why now? Why this failure happens now and not six months ago? Do you have new employees? If yes, it might be that part of your cause is related to training and certification of new employees, and your improvement actions should include that aspect as well. If not, worth dig-in a bit more and understand what was changed.
• In what way the procedure was vague, and how come you didn’t find it before? What other procedures are unclear? What control you have over your processes to understand that different operators carried out this task differently? Are there other areas of your operations that hold such a variation between functions, and how will you fix it?
• Why your inline or final inspection point didn’t catch this failure? Are there additional potential failures you cannot detect? How are you going to improve your testing and inspection going forward?

Each of these questions and the apparent answers make your improvement plan irrelevant and make you look unprofessional.

A Wake-up call: How many action items you usually get after an interaction with your customers? One or two every once in a while is an indication of a healthy partnership. But, if your customers keep challenging your approach, conclusions, and improvement actions – it is a red flag, and you better pay attention. This indicates that your team is not standing up to customer expectations – usually out of lack of in-depth understanding of quality management methodologies.

Plan of Action: For every failure investigation, you should have at least two causes. One is the immediate cause, the aspect of the failure which directly influences the outcome. In our example above, it is a vague procedure. The second cause should be a contributing cause, meaning the environment that allows this cause to happen, like new employees, lack of adequate testing, a culture of blaming or lack of reporting, etc.

Mistake no. 3: Not Understanding Your Customer Needs

Please do your homework – before facing the customer. Make a phone call or initiate a short preparation meeting with your contacts at the customer to learn more about their expectations. ‘Buy-in’ your message before the meeting. Make sure your message is aligned with what your customer is expecting to hear. Get feedback on your presentation and correct it as required. It may seem like much trouble, but eventually, it will help you get smoother interaction with the customer, equivalent to gold – both to your career and the business.

A Wake-up call: Same as mistake no. 2 above, pay attention to how many times your customer is challenging your problem-solving and improvement plan. If your customer knows how to do it fairly quickly, no reason your team will not. Something is not working in your organization, and you have to sort it out.

Plan of Action: Once your customer is complaining, focus on what your customer needs to meet their goals. Understand what you need to do IMMEDIATELY to mitigate the problem and allow your customer a quick recovery. Define your plan for the SHORT TERM, meaning the next couple of months, and in parallel, develop your LONG TERM strategy, which usually should be new processes or systems to address the cause. If you manage to have all these three consistently for every customer complaint, you will see the improvement rather quickly.

Mistake no. 4: Losing your Calmness

Facing an angry customer is a difficult situation to carry. But it is vital to keep your calm when your customer is not pleased (at least). Mirroring customer reaction is NOT the ideal situation in this case. It would help if you did not point the customer and suggest they have their hands in this failure. On the other hand, don’t get defensive – it often indicates weakness and will make your customer even less confident in you.

Adopt active listening. Don’t make the situation worse by challenging the complaint or blaming your customer. Understand, this is not personal; it’s a business situation you have to handle professionally. Eventually, once the people on the other side of the zoom get the sense you are fully aware of this issue’s severity, the discussion will become much more comfortable.

These are the four common mistakes in approaching customer complaints. Hopefully, now that you are aware of these mistakes, it will inspire you to handle customer complaints differently & better.