KPI of the Day – Marketing: # Compliments to complaints
Definition
Compares the number of compliments to the number of complaints received in during the measurement period.
Purpose
It reflects customer attitudes and expressed behaviors towards the company, as a result of their satisfaction level.
Recommendations
Although the number of compliments should by far exceed the number of complaints received from customers, both components are essential for the continuous improvement of the products and/or services offered. Less complaints are indicative of higher customer satisfaction rates and a good perceived quality degree of the products/services offered.
However, complaints should not be viewed and dismissed as negative, since -in their capacity of reliable customer feedback- they represent a valuable tool for further development. Criticism usually includes more elaborate descriptions and suggestions and they might even turn into a comprehensive product/service review.
Furthermore, many customer complaints may arise not only because the product/service was poor in quality, but because customer expectations were merely different. Thus, complaints also provide valuable information on current and changing customer expectations.
In order to make full use of the compliments to complaints ratio, companies should focus on:
- Encouraging feedback from customers, whether negative or positive, through customer comment cards, suggestion boxes, online surveys, live chat, personal e-mails, website feedback widgets, etc;
- Analyzing and discussing the root causes of complaints as an essential component of process optimization;
- Making sure that customer complaints are dealt with appropriately and, if they are issued directly or an answer is expected, the people responsible with providing the response are properly trained;
- Acknowledging and praising employees, teams or departments which have been complimented by customers in order to enforce and disseminate positive behavior.
One noteworthy aspect for this KPI is the fact that it is just a partial measure of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, as not all satisfied customers make a compliment and not all dissatisfied clients fill out a complaint.
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Tags: KPI, Marketing performance
