Complaints require positive action.
Complaints can be your best source of information about problems and frustrations.
Yes, we welcome complaints to achieve a balanced understanding of what is happening in the community. Sure, there will never be enough money or time to address every complaint you receive adequately, but you can certainly get things moving in the right direction.
Complaining about performance enables people to improve if you can change the conversation from the past to the future. Complainers tend to be stuck in the past, whereas leaders turn toward the future and look into new possibilities.
Take a positive approach to complaints and consider them good feedback about the problems and frustrations in the community. While there will be many complaints outside your sphere of influence, at least you can pass on people’s concerns.
Complaints and challenges you need to overcome.
Pointing out and doing something about fault-finding, mistakes, failures, and defects are essential aspects of leadership.
Remember when the customer was always right? Unfortunately, customer service is suffering as less qualified people fill jobs out of necessity because of a lack of appropriate education. Politicians seem only interested in their careers and are too bound up in ‘political correctness’ rubbish.
- Prick the balloon of complaints, allow people to let their ‘hot air’ out
- Invite positive complaints from people who care
- Resolve to do something about the allegations
- Turn complaints into decisive action.
- Never force people to choose sides.
- Look to improve personal service and the ‘customer experience’.
A simple process for handling complaints
Learning how to treat a complaint is critical for any community developer. The last thing you want is a misguided response.
Just as there will always be problems and frustrations in our communities, satisfactory ways will still exist to resolve the issues and help people move on with the many possibilities for the future.
Quotable Quotes
“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness”. Confucius
“I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”. Jewish Proverb