INTRODUCTION
Complaints and Gifts
Welcome to a journey of self-discovery, with practical tools and case examples that will help you master handling feedback and complaints. We’ll introduce you to a mindset about complaint handling that will help you improve relationships at work and in your personal life. We’re going to introduce you to the A Complaint Is a Gift philosophy!
Who This Workbook Is For
This workbook is for everyone who wants to learn more about giving and constructively receiving feedback. It’s specifically for complaint handlers, but you will find it has value for service providers, salespeople, managers, team members, and trainers as well as people who don’t like personal criticism.
This workbook can also help organizations run internal workshops to strengthen complaint-handling competencies of both leaders and employees. You can find the A Complaint Is a Gift (CIAG) Train the Trainers program on our web page. You can join this private trainer group and attend quarterly live sessions with us. We also share recommendations to excel at delivering CIAG in-house programs using the contents of this workbook.
We did not write this workbook for managers or supervisors who guide teams of complaint handlers. Nonetheless, they will find it valuable so they can operate with the same understanding as their teams.
We wrote this workbook to delve into the business of customer feedback that many complaint handlers know only at a cursory level. Of course, that’s not true for all complaint handlers. Some have years of experience and have completed excellent training. However, these people may be rarer than you think. Most CSRs have been trained to be friendly and helpful but are instructed to more or less handle complaints in a way that focuses on an organization’s processes rather than its customers.
If you are a CSR, you are incredibly valuable to your organization’s bottom line because your primary responsibility is bringing customers to a state of satisfaction and loyalty after they have faced a problem. We believe CSR turnover would happen far less often if complaint handlers were empowered to use their creativity to find reasonable and fair problem solutions for their customers.
Barring these changes occurring, we believe the explanations and techniques offered in this workbook will have a great impact on job performance. Some readers may find all 101 activities don’t exactly fit their precise job description, but going through those exercises, whether or not they fit your job description, will help you understand the principles we cover. We have written this workbook to cover a broad range of CSRs dealing with a wide variety of customer issues. We advise readers to feel free to make adjustments in specific examples but not miss the bigger points being made.
Working with a Partner
You will at times be asked to do an activity with another person. Think about someone with whom you would like to work. They can go through these same materials or not. A partner will enable you to get someone else’s reactions. They can push you with their responses, particularly when you ask them to play the role of a customer.
Abbreviations and Terms Used in This Workbook
As much as we like the phrase “A Complaint Is a Gift,” it contains seventeen letters, plus four spaces, so you will see the abbreviation CIAG.
You will see also LTIO, an abbreviation that appears with almost every activity. It means “Let’s Try It Out.” It’s an invitation for you to jump in and do something. This could involve answering a question, taking an assessment, or reviewing a lesson you have covered.
You’ll also see “Learning Point,” which indicates an important point emphasized in that activity.
We’ll also use the abbreviation CSR, meaning Customer Service Representative. Just remember, whatever your company calls your job position (e.g., CSRs, service providers, complaint handlers, product exchange staff, computer techs), this book speaks to all workers who handle complaints as all or some part of their job responsibilities.
Self-Checks
After each chapter, except for chapter 1, you will find a self-check. It’s a chance to review what you have covered up to that point and reinforce what you have learned. Please don’t skip these self-checks because they will help you better retain all the content we cover.
Graphical Images
We have worked hard to insert images that represent the broad range of students of this material. Most of the images come from Getty Images, the world’s largest commercial image archive, unless otherwise specified. We appreciate the value these images add to this workbook.
How to Use Accompanying Blended Resources
As you start this workbook, we ask you to make some commitments— that you will do the activities, answer the questionnaires, complete the assessments, and use the interactive tools. Any learning experience requires trying things out. This workbook is meant to be a journey of self-discovery to improve your skills in a fun, proven, and practical way.
You are more than welcome to go through this workbook in the order in which it is presented. You can also get creative and skip around, though you will find ideas are grouped together in chapters and are probably best learned together. If you clearly know the content, feel free to skip some of the activities, but they can also offer a chance to review the concepts.
In several activities, you will see links to our web page www.ciag.online/. There you will find many resources.
As a bonus for purchasing the workbook, you can join our A Complaint Is a Gift Facebook group, which is filled with even more resources as well as live events with us and our guests. It’s a brilliant community. Members share knowledge and on-time recommendations to expand your learning and keep you up to date on the latest complaint-handling trends and tactics. It’s a field that is constantly changing.
URLs and Links
URLs and links sometimes change or get corrupted, especially YouTube video links. If you find a link to referenced material, videos, or pages that no longer works, please send us an email. We’ll treat your complaint as a gift and will be happy to send you updated links or the direct material. Please contact us at [email protected].
Welcome from Your Guides
A quick welcome from Victoria and Janelle. You’ll learn more about us as you progress through this workbook, and you can read about our backgrounds at the back of this book.
But for the moment, we want to extend our hellos. We’re excited to guide you through the process of paying attention to that critical point in the customer-service process when things go wrong. With this focus, you will no doubt attend more closely to your customers, and your service recovery will automatically become more customer centric. This, in turn, will enhance your role in focusing on your customers for your company or business.
We’re happy to walk through this journey with you.