Negotiating Complaints

Yesterday I was speaking to someone I trained nearly eleven years ago, whose restaurant business has flourished in the intervening years.

Coming off the call, I found myself thinking about complaints – when expectations aren’t met when an agreement is made.

Good businesses don’t have to deal with them too often - but none of us gets everything right 100% of the time.

A poor meal, a delayed delivery, a service outage or a systemic quality failure can all create the same basic challenge:

Someone is unhappy, and you need to decide how best to respond.

From my experience, there are a few simple principles that make a real difference.

1. Firstly - never interrupt

If someone is angry, frustrated or disappointed, let them speak and finish without interruption.

Let them explain what has happened from their perspective - let them vent. Pause, and wait until you’re sure they’ve finished.

Interrupting nearly always makes things worse.

It suggests that you are more interested in looking for a gap to defend your position rather than understanding their position.

Listening is not the same as agreeing.

Before you can resolve anything, the other person needs to believe that they have actually been heard.

2. Summarise accurately and concisely

Once they have finished, summarise back what you’ve understood.

Summary behaviour can be delivered from active and reflective listening.

Reflective listening can be very powerful when rapport is strong – building on the existing foundations with nuance and context. But when someone is irritated or angry, they may have little appetite for interpretation or nuance.

Keep it simple - use their actual words phrases and expressions – with a calm and measured approach.

“So, if I’ve understood correctly, the delivery was due on Tuesday, you weren’t told it had been delayed, and this is now the second time this has happened. Is that right?”

You are not trying to tell them how they feel.

You are demonstrating that you have understood what happened - they may still be annoyed. However, if they know they have been listened to, you are already in a much better place.

3. Decide whether the complaint is legitimate

If the complaint is justified, acknowledge it.

“I understand the issue and the problems it has caused. What can I do to put this right?”

Some people worry that asking this question is dangerous.

My anecdotal evidence from watching 10,000 hours of people negotiating suggests otherwise.

In many cases, people want something quite straightforward: an apology, reassurance that the issue has been understood, and confidence that it will be fixed and will not happen again. Sometimes they will ask for modest compensation – and this may be entirely appropriate. If the problem is genuinely your fault and the customer/supplier/stakeholder has suffered as a result, putting it right is simply good business.

4. Know when the complaint becomes a negotiation

This is the important distinction.

A complaint is not automatically a negotiation.

It becomes one when the other person’s proposed remedy goes beyond what you are prepared to offer. That is the point at which you need to start thinking commercially.

What is the value of the relationship?

What is the scale of the failure?

What can you give that may have high value to them but relatively low cost to you?

And if you do need to move, what should you ask for in return?

The mistake is starting that negotiation too early. If you begin defending, bargaining or making offers before you fully understand the nature of the problem, you risk giving value away unnecessarily - and making the customer feel that you still haven’t listened.

The sequence matters.

Understand first.
Resolve what is fair.
Negotiate the gap only.

Handled badly, complaints can damage relationships very quickly.

Handled well, they can demonstrate something equally powerful about a business:

when things go wrong, we listen, we take responsibility where appropriate, and we act.

That, ultimately, is good complaint handling, and good negotiating behaviour.

‍