The Importance of Complaints

As a young operator, I always hated complaints. Complaints often seemed like a personal affront. I tried very hard to make it right for my guests and when they complained, it felt like a knife in the heart. I always wanted to sit them down and set them straight about what it really takes to run a restaurant!

Complaints disrupted the daily routine. When a complaint came in, it meant that I was going to lose productive time to investigate, ask questions and write letters. If it was a complaint that someone made in person, I would have to drop everything else to deal with this person and since I was already pushed to my limit, complaints were intrusions.

Complaints also always seemed to throw me off track, sometimes for days. I would be depressed when we dropped the ball in an area where we should have known better. Often I would start questioning whether or not I knew what I was doing. I looked at my staff with suspicion. I know I was far more critical for awhile, both of my staff and myself. The service lapses hurt . . . and those were only the ones I found out about!

Why are complaints important?

Based on a survey by the National Retail Merchants Association, 14% of the people who stop patronizing a business do so because they had a complaint that was not handled well. That is a lot of business to give away due to lack of skill and understanding when it comes to dealing with guest complaints.

If people would tell you when things are not right, that would make it a lot easier but every complaining guest could represent 24 other diners who had the same problem and chose not to tell you about it. Worse than that, a complaining guest will tell 8-10 people about their problem. One in five will tell twenty. (One in a hundred will probably tell a thousand, but that is another story.) If you run the numbers, you can calculate that the cost of losing a single $50-a-year guest could exceed $50,000 over five years!

If you grasp the significance of these statistics, you can see the potential income you have at risk if complaints are not properly handled. If you grasp the significance of these statistics, you can see the need to get aggressive about identifying and solving any potential difficulties before your guests even become aware of them.