Filing a Complaint? Stop Complaining!

When you need to file a complaint, writing a letter is usually the most effective way to accomplish this.  Unlike phone calls and e-mail, complaint letters explain your situation in black and white.  Holding your letter in their hands makes your complaint feel substantial to your readers.  As a result, a well-written letter adds gravity to your complaint and makes it feel more serious.

A well-written complaint letter, however, is not an angry letter.  To be successful with your written complaints, it’s helpful to remember that your reader is another human being who’s doing his or her job to the best of their ability.  Confrontation, therefore, is unproductive.  No matter how angry you may feel, a good complaint letter will take the feelings of your reader into account.

This is why the most effective complaint letters are concise, authoritative, factual and friendly.

Complaint letters need to be concise so your reader can easily understand and respond to your problem.  You may feel a need to be long-winded in your explanation of why the product failed to meet your expectations, but this isn’t what your reader needs.  The main idea of your letter must be understood within the first few seconds so that your reader can begin planning your solution immediately.

Good complaint letters are also authoritative.  The presentation of your complaint must establish your credibility.  This is why it’s helpful to use letterhead on quality stationery.  Professional sounding language and correct grammar are also essential.  Remember, the way you write will make an impression on the reader, affecting their attitude and their response.

In addition, your complaints must be factual.  Relevant names, dates, prices and details must be included.  The facts you present will justify whether or not your complaint should be resolved as you wish.  Therefore, allow your facts to speak for themselves and build your case.  Facts provide objectivity where emotions do not.

Also, remember to be friendly with your complaints.  Being negative, terminating the relationship and taking your business elsewhere will give your readers little incentive to make any adjustments for you.  Express your desire to remain loyal, and the customer service agents will do their utmost to maintain your loyalty.

Customer service agents are doing what they can to help you, so don’t take your frustrations out on them.  When you write a complaint, be concise, authoritative, factual and friendly and you’ll be more successful in getting the solutions that you want.

Complaints: It's All About Loyalty

One of the most important principles you can remember for your business communications is this: If you want to get people to do what you want them to do, you have to make them feel the way you want them to feel.  In other words, you must create the desire within others to take action. 

It’s obvious to see how this principle applies when you’re motivating or persuading.  It’s less obvious, however, to see where this applies in your business writing.  So today we’ll discuss applying this principle in one very common area of business writing, and that’s writing complaint letters.

If you want to get people to do what you want them to do, you have to make them feel the way you want them to feel.  Let’s imagine that you want to write a complaint.  Maybe you bought a new handphone that needed servicing and after you waited for three weeks, the authorized service center returned it to you still malfunctioning.  You need to express your dissatisfaction.  So how do you go about writing the complaint letter?

Research shows that more than half of the complaint letters that customer service people receive are expressions of anger.  Many go on to insult the company or even the customer service agent reading the letter.  Letters like this are not helpful to you, however, and are unlikely to get the results you want.  Angry letters, after all, will receive angry responses and angry customer services agents will be reluctant to make any adjustments on your behalf.

So ask yourself, how do you want the reader to feel?  If the customer service agent is going to respond positively to your complaint letter he or she has to understand your needs and feel a sense of responsibility or even accountability on the company’s behalf to keep you satisfied as a customer.  Your job as a letter writer, therefore, is to make the reader feel understanding and accountable.

How can you do this?  Most importantly, remember that your complaint letter is about YOU, the customer, and not about their product.  The reader needs to sense that you are a loyal customer whose expectations were unmet.  You can do this by explaining your normally happy experience with the product and expressing your disappointment that this time your experience is different. 

Be friendly when you suggest a solution.  Your objective is to make your reader feel obligated, not forced.  Making demands is less effective than explaining what it would take to make you happy again.

If you want to get people to do what you want them to do, you have to make them feel the way you want them to feel.  To make people feel good about responding to your complaints, make them feel good about you first.

The View from the Top

A few years back, I spent ten days in Scotland attending a conference with 50 other trainers.  The October weather was cold, windy and rainy, so we all spent much of our time working indoors.  By the fourth day, missing Malaysian sunshine, I developed cabin fever and needed a long walk.  I put on boots and raingear and headed for the hill behind our venue.

As I trudged upwards, the rain subsided and gave way to breezy, cloudy skies.  It seemed for a moment that the sun would actually break through, but before I knew it, I found myself in the rain again.  From the time I began walking to the time I reached the top of the hill, the weather had changed a dozen different times.

It wasn’t until I reached the summit, however, and turned to see the valley spread out before me that I got the big picture.  All over the valley, different areas were experiencing different weather patterns depending on the position of the clouds above.  A patch of sunshine would move across the valley floor giving way to more rain.  A windy patch would blow through the trees for miles before dying out.  A field full of grazing sheep would get soaked under a passing shower. 

From my perspective climbing from the bottom of the hill, all of these changes were happening to me alone.  From my view at the top, however, I could see how the moving clouds affected changes in the weather throughout the whole valley.

Change management in your organization works the same way.  From your view at the top, you can see how changes that you initiate or respond to are going to affect, and maybe even benefit, different parts of your organization.  From the bottom, however, the view is different.  Your staff experiences the change without the benefit of the big picture.  For them, change means disruption in the familiar environment, disturbances in routine schedules, and stressful adaptation to the unfamiliar.  It’s no wonder that change is often met with resistance.

Ultimately, organizational change is about people and that’s why your prime consideration needs to be the impact of the change upon your staff.  To help you change their resistance to acceptance, remember to keep them informed and updated.  Highlight benefits and success, but be honest with bad news as well.  Your enthusiasm for the change will be infectious, so be a model for dedication and get complete investment from your senior management as well. 

Delegate responsibilities to the staff most affected by the change to guarantee investment and ownership.  And most importantly, keep the channels for feedback wide open to allow honest communication back and forth between you and your staff so you can monitor the impact of the change.

It’s easier to see patches of sunshine from the top than it is while standing in the rain at the bottom.  For the benefit of your people, keep this in mind when you plan you change initiatives.