The Gift of the Client Complaint for Massage Therapists

Dan Clements, author of The Practitioner’s Journey, has a great blog which I have enjoyed and gleaned inspiration from for several years now. He has a good way of looking at customer complaints and how dealing with complaints flows nicely into customer service. Read on! —Eileen

The standard approach to good customer service goes something like this: “Let’s provide great service to keep everyone happy. If someone complains, we’ll make them happy, too.”

It’s not a bad approach, really. After all, good service does usually make for happy clients, and happy clients equal more visits and more referrals.

But what if that’s not the whole story?

Recently, I read two interesting stats on customer complaints that made me change the way we approach client service. The first is this: For every complaint, there are 26 more complaints that aren’t voiced.

That’s important, but not surprising. It means that a client complaint is the tip of the iceberg.

It’s the second one that really struck me: Customers who complain, and are satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all. (Source: TARP, via Church of the Customer)

This is a remarkable bit of information. If the stat is true, then satisfying an upset client doesn’t just stop them from complaining to others, and it doesn’t just stop them from taking their massage business elsewhere. It means they actually become a better client, one who is more loyal, and refers and returns more as a result.

Go Looking for Trouble
There’s a shift here in how we focus our energy. Instead of treating customer service as a way of delighting clients and avoiding complaints in practice, we should also be actively seeking to find the complaints that are out there. And if the first stat – the tip-of-the-iceberg one – is true, then there are lots of them to find.

Seeking out complaints seems like the last thing in the world you’d want to do, but it makes sense. The more complaints that are voiced and resolved, the better your practice will do.

Here’s our simple two-step approach to find and fix service problems:

First, Ask For The Complaints
That may seem obvious, but there seems to be a big gap between knowing you should and actually doing it. Here are two simple ways that may work for your practice:

Online Surveys like surveymonkey.com
The While-You’re-Waiting Paper Survey (a survey that clients can fill out while they sit in your waiting room)

We’ve tried both, and both work. We’ve also tried asking in person, but people tend to be less forthright. After all, those 26 hidden complaints are hidden for a reason. Our experience has been that the truth seems to be easier to come by when there’s a layer of anonymity.

What’s really important is to keep things simple. I keep getting these survey requests by email saying things like, “We really appreciate you as a customer. Can you do our survey? It only takes 20 minutes.” 20 minutes? Forget it. Too long.

Keep it simple. In your next email newsletter, try something like, “Can you help me get better? I’d love it if you could take my survey. It only has one question, and won’t take you longer than three minutes.” Then just add a link to a survey and ask a single question – something along the lines of one of these:

What’s the most annoying or disappointing thing about visiting our office?
Or
If you could change one thing about your experience in my clinic, what would it be?

Then, Fix The Complaints Without Help From Your Ego
So how do you actually fix the complaints you get? There are an infinite number of possible complaints and solutions, but the best way to navigate your way to success is to take your ego out of the picture.

Don’t explain, rationalize or make excuses
Decide that you really do want to resolve the complaint
Disconnect complaint from personality. As soon as you fall into thinking, “Well, you can’t please everyone,” or “Some people just love to complain,” then you’ve lost.

You have to assume that the complaint isn’t personal. It’s a flashing “check customer” light on the dashboard of your practice that says, “This is broken.” It’s not about you or the client. It’s just something to fix. And when you fix it, things work better.

Dan Clements, B.Comm., B.A. & Tara Gignac, ND, are the authors of The Practitioner’s Journey, and Escape 101: Sabbaticals Made Simple, which has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Success Magazine and on A-list blogs such as Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. They operate StoneTree Clinic in Collingwood, ON.