Common categories of the complainers
Published 5:57 pm Friday, September 10, 2010
What kind of a complainer are you?
Maybe you’re the squeaky wheel, the guest who keeps writing back over and over, even after you’ve been told “no” in a dozen different ways.
Or maybe your grievances fall into the “special circumstances” category: You’re sick, you’re broke, you’re having a bad year.
At the right time, these are all perfectly reasonable ways to complain to a travel company. At the wrong time, they can doom your customer service request to failure.
At a recent Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals’ conference in Atlanta, I spoke with customer service managers in the travel industry. The topic? How do you prioritize requests from customers based on their elite status?
Here’s what I learned:
Squeaky wheel
These gripers are easy to identify because the correspondence runs on for pages and pages. Squeaky-wheel queries usually have no more merit than garden-variety inquiries, except that they are repeated endlessly until the aggrieved party gets its way.
This is an effective tactic if you’re 2 years old. Adults should try the squeaky wheel strategy only if they plan to never do business with the company again, because companies keep track of difficult customers. You will pay for it down the line.
Laundry list
A careful inventory of every single problem on a trip confuses folks in the customer-service department. I see a lot of these on cruises. It makes you look petty, and it makes it difficult for a customer-service professional to identify an issue they can effectively address.
You’re better off sticking to one problem and then telling the company what it can do to fix it.
Special circumstances
There are a few words that really hurt your chances when you’re filing a grievance. “We are seniors on a fixed income,” probably tops the list. Not to be insensitive, but in a way, everyone is on a fixed income, and if you don’t have the money, you shouldn’t be spending it — at least that’s the view of the travel company you’re complaining to.
“I’m an elite-level customer” is another. Also popular: A relative got sick or died, I lost my job, I got a new job, my son’s soccer team made it to the finals — you get the idea.
These are all perfectly valid excuses, unless you’re holding a nonrefundable ticket or room reservation. If you can’t afford to lose those, consider insurance or book a room that can be refunded.
Name dropper
Sometimes, in order to underscore the seriousness of their complaint, a traveler will copy everyone in the world on a grievance: The VP of customer service, the CEO, the CFO, the Better Business Bureau, the cleaning lady and even yours truly.
“Carpet-bombing,” as it’s frequently called actually hurts your chances of getting a successful resolution.
Instead of turning up the volume on your first try, give the system some time to work. Then, appeal to the powers that be. The string of e-mails in the “cc:” field doesn’t make you look good.
Break up
This complaint comes in two flavors: The one that ends with, “I’ll never do business with your company again,” and the one that concludes with, “If you don’t do exactly what I want, I’ll sue you.” Avoid both.
If you tell a company you’ll never do business with it again, then why should it even bother responding? If you threaten to sue, your letter will get forwarded to the legal department, where it could languish for months before being answered.
Break-ups — real and imagined — are almost always completely unnecessary. Instead, tell the company how disappointed you are, and that you’re looking for a reason to do business with it again.
My advice is to stay away from threats, name-dropping, lengthy complaints and sob stories. These grievances almost always hurt you more than they help. Take it from someone who spends all day reading complaints.
&Copy; 2010 Christopher Elliott/Tribune Media Services, Inc.
