There’s a big difference between complaints and whining. I can’t stand whining. But, I love complaints. Complaints are an opportunity to fix something. I love fixing stuff.

When dealing with customer complaints I like to ask the customers, “What is it you want us to do to make you happy?” I try not to tell them what I’m going to do unless I already know exactly what they want.

Regardless of what they say they want, a good leadership technique is either to give them all of what they want or nothing at all.

Let’s say you have a dispute about a service bill. If they say they don’t think they should be charged anything and you offer up 50/50 you have just wasted your 50%.

They may very well take it but they are still mad, they hate you and they are going to say ugly things about you and your dealership to their friends and relatives.

I have another leadership tip I want to share with you along these same lines and it goes like this: If you get a complaint, you own the complaint. Seems easy enough, doesn’t it?

What I mean by that is, you will often get a complaint but it’s not necessarily your responsibility to handle it, so you hand it off to the person or department whose responsibility it might be.

A good leadership technique for you, and for you to teach your staff, is that whoever first got the complaint “owns it.” Meaning they should take the responsibility to follow up on it to ensure that the person you or they handed it off to has handled it.

These are two very simple leadership disciplines:

1. When it’s your responsibility to fix it, give the
customer everything they want or nothing at all.

2. You own the complaint. Follow up and make sure it is taken care of.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs