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For a happy, lawsuit-free New Year, listen to your customers!
By Lauren | January 1, 2010
We’ve survived 2009 and are beginning 2010, a bright new year full of promise. The last thing you need is for your company to come under legal fire in the coming year. So, let’s continue my Friday series on keeping your business out of court by focusing on a mistake too many companies make: failing to respond when customers complain.
You’d think that, if a company got multiple complaints on the same topic, management would make changes. Unfortunately, businesses can be a lot like people. They get set in their ways and attached to a particular approach, and tend to dismiss feedback that doesn’t jive with their preferences. Here’s an example.
According to news reports, a few years ago corporate giant McDonald’s got multiple complaints from customers that its coffee was uncomfortably hot. On the other hand, other customers liked being able to drive through and pick up coffee that was still steaming when they got to work. The company’s management reportedly preferred the positive feedback from the latter group, and allegedly required franchisees to keep their coffee temperature up. When a customer filed suit against McDonald’s after she got badly scalded by spilled coffee, complaints the company had received from other customers became prime evidence to support the customer’s claim that McDonald’s knew its coffee was potentially dangerous but failed to take action to solve the problem.
Some companies are so big that they can dismiss the occasional lawsuit as just another cost of doing business. Still, why go to court if you can prevent a lawsuit? When your customers (and employees, for that matter) tell you there’s something wrong with some aspect of your business, think carefully before you decide that their comments have no merit. Particularly if it’s a question of safety, pay attention and fix the problem. Learning from what they tell you can go a long way toward giving your company a happy, lawsuit-free new year.
Topics: Business Ethics, Risk Management, business communications, customer relations, ethics |
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:56 pm
I have just been beaten up by Microsoft for the last time. Transferred a gillion times, given the wrong information, now on hold for 10 minutes, three transfers to a final “Oh, that department is closed on Sunday!” (I even asked before they transferred me three times.
I have had it. Customer service is dead with them. I am moving to open software. Good post, but I have given up on many of America’s computer and software companies. They could absolutely care less about the consumer.