Rating: 
Summary: The best book available for customer service!
Review: I just discovered this book, and it is a godsend! I have my entire company reading it. We can tell that there is a profound difference in the way that our customers respond to us. Janelle Barlow is a very gifted researcher with the ability to make complex ideas clearly understandable. Her co-author, Claus Moller, is one of Europe most highly regarded management gurus. The book even comes with a forward by the Chairman of British Airways -- who credits the methods discussed with turning his complany around from a money-loser to one of the world's premier airlines. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to get better at customer service.
Rating: 
Summary: A rather simple but nonetheless readable and worthwhile book
Review: I used this book in my conflict management course. The students (colleges juniors and seniors) liked the book because it was easy to read and discussed many interesting examples of the benefits derived from processing ;complaints constructively. I recommend this book for supplementary reading in a conflict management or customer relations course. It is not, however, suitable as the primary text for a serious course.
Rating:
Summary: A well-written cookbook, but not forceful enough . . .
Review: I wish the Authors said like it is: CUSTOMER SERVICE? It depends on one guy over fifty. These are those arrogant, marginally-intelligent guys called CEOs, who play their games and don't care for much or many but themselves. They sit on the top of the corporate pyramid and if the guy is good (Hewlett-Packard), so is the Company. If the guy is arrogant so is the corporate Pyramid, i.e. PanAm (R.I.P), Braniff (R.I.P),KODAK (R.I.P. soon), Apple, Microsoft, INTEL. Remember the Andy "Pentium" Grove fiasco? Should a CEO like Steve Jobs insist on a well-functioning Customer Service Department, he'll read this book, hire people who care and - believe me - it is done. That's all what there is to it. Customer Service or HR. Clear?
Rating:
Summary: Great tool for all service companies
Review: Moller and Barlow's book is a must read for managers of all service companies. It gives some really brilliant examples of what makes companies like Nordstrom stand out from the crowd, and also gives useful guidelines for implementing a service culture in any organization.
Complaints handling is a very important, and often overlooked, aspect of creating service orientation and awareness. The lessons from this book can be used in any size of company.
I have personally used this book in my work as a consultant and my clients were as thrilled by this book (which I used as a gift) as I was.
If you want to survive in today's fast paced environment and retain existing customers (which is a lot easier than getting new ones) you really need to read this book.
BUY IT!!
Rating:
Summary: Inspires powerful customer service skills in staff.
Review: Not just another customer service how-to, "A Complaint is a Gift" is an extremely practical, intelligent and inspired approach to customer retention. Rather than a top-down technique that sounds great on paper, the ideas outlined in the book are tools that front-line staff can understand and apply. My organization hired Janelle Barlow to teach these principles to our clinical staff, who thought they had nothing new to learn but unanimously said these lessons revolutionized their relationships with patients. (We now joke about how we received a "gift" today.) We highly recommend the book as well as the training.
Rating:
Summary: Inspires powerful customer service skills in staff.
Review: Not just another customer service how-to, "A Complaint is a Gift" is an extremely practical, intelligent and inspired approach to customer retention. Rather than a top-down technique that sounds great on paper, the ideas outlined in the book are tools that front-line staff can understand and apply. My organization hired Janelle Barlow to teach these principles to our clinical staff, who thought they had nothing new to learn but unanimously said these lessons revolutionized their relationships with patients. (We now joke about how we received a "gift" today.) We highly recommend the book as well as the training.
Rating:
Summary: It's about time we welcome complaints!
Review: Practical, simple and impactful! Not only does Dr. Barlow's "gift formula" impact customer service in the workplace - it is an excellent tool in one's personal life. Welcoming complaints is a great concept and the results are showing in our service evaluations.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book - I wrote it!
Review: The feedback we are receiving from people who are implementing the ideas in A Complaint Is a Gift is tremendous! Some companies are buying copies of the book for every staff member, and paying them to read it and implement the ideas. Our client companies are showing dramatically increased customer retention rates of their distraught customers by using the Gift Formula outlined in the book
Rating:
Summary: Turning Complaints Into Profitable, Long-Term Success!
Review: This book creates a new paradigm concerning customer dissatisfaction: The complaint is a major economic opportunity which can be systematically used to improve business processes, reduce errors, increase quality, strengthen bonds with customers, and create expanded growth and profitability. The reason: We normally see things from the company's view point, and miss many mistakes and opportunities by not empathizing enough with the customer's view point. A good related book is Moments of Truth (which I also reviewed), which looks at using this approach during the turnaround of SAS. The book is organized into three parts. The first one looks at the economic implications of complaints. Complaints are an opportunity to improve (the theory behind the gift paradigm), are cheap market research, present chances to win over customers, can establish a closer link to customers if we encourage them to complain, and are a great economic threat if we leave the enraged customer dissatisfied (as they tell everyone they can on television and the Internet). There are many useful examples and statistics to establish the size and importance of these economic connections. Part II explains how to implement a complaint-as-a-gift program in an individual circumstance of dealing with an unhappy customer. The key barrier here is that front-line employees feel the pain of the personal attacks they receive, and fight back. I thought the best part of the book was in the explanations about how the psychology of these interactions works in most cases, and can be improved. The book has many scripts and examples of how to make this less painful for the front-line people while delighting the customer. Part III looks at making a complaint-friendly enterprise, by implementing this concept as broadly and as deeply as possible in your organization. This requires making it easier to access your company (toll-free numbers and rapid replies to letters), having complaint-friendly policies, improving your culture to handle and enjoy complaints, extending the same approach to satisfying internal customers, and launching the changes in the right way as a permanent part of your way of doing business. Reading this book made me uncomfortable in one area: What can be done to treat employees well who bear the burden of the complaints? It seemed to me that the processes described here still leave the customer well ahead of the employee in emotional terms. I don't believe we can expect companies to perform well if customers get great treatment which includes being able to verbally, emotionally, and perhaps physically abuse employees. My feeling is that customers need to understand what the limits of reasonable behaviors are in complaining. Those who behave better should get great treatment, and those who behave poorly should get the benefit of the doubt. But no one should have to put up with what they would not tolerate from a guest in their own home. My proposal is that this system should be beefed up with marketing and promotional tools that encourage good behavior by the customers when they complain, and clear rules that customers and employees both understand about how much the employee is expected to take before protecting him- or herself. After you read and apply the ideas in this book (which are certainly sound as far as they go in defining many aspects of the opportunity), think about where else you would benefit from hearing more complaints. If your spouse and children don't complain, is it possible that you are avoiding hearing complaints at the cost of having a poorer relationship with them that cannot bear much honest communication? Who would you like to receive more complaints from? How can you encourage those complaints?
Rating:
Summary: Turning Complaints Into Profitable, Long-Term Success!
Review: This book creates a new paradigm concerning customer dissatisfaction: The complaint is a major economic opportunity which can be systematically used to improve business processes, reduce errors, increase quality, strengthen bonds with customers, and create expanded growth and profitability. The reason: We normally see things from the company's view point, and miss many mistakes and opportunities by not empathizing enough with the customer's view point. A good related book is Moments of Truth (which I also reviewed), which looks at using this approach during the turnaround of SAS.
The book is organized into three parts. The first one looks at the economic implications of complaints. Complaints are an opportunity to improve (the theory behind the gift paradigm), are cheap market research, present chances to win over customers, can establish a closer link to customers if we encourage them to complain, and are a great economic threat if we leave the enraged customer dissatisfied (as they tell everyone they can on television and the Internet). There are many useful examples and statistics to establish the size and importance of these economic connections. Part II explains how to implement a complaint-as-a-gift program in an individual circumstance of dealing with an unhappy customer. The key barrier here is that front-line employees feel the pain of the personal attacks they receive, and fight back. I thought the best part of the book was in the explanations about how the psychology of these interactions works in most cases, and can be improved. The book has many scripts and examples of how to make this less painful for the front-line people while delighting the customer. Part III looks at making a complaint-friendly enterprise, by implementing this concept as broadly and as deeply as possible in your organization. This requires making it easier to access your company (toll-free numbers and rapid replies to letters), having complaint-friendly policies, improving your culture to handle and enjoy complaints, extending the same approach to satisfying internal customers, and launching the changes in the right way as a permanent part of your way of doing business. Reading this book made me uncomfortable in one area: What can be done to treat employees well who bear the burden of the complaints? It seemed to me that the processes described here still leave the customer well ahead of the employee in emotional terms. I don't believe we can expect companies to perform well if customers get great treatment which includes being able to verbally, emotionally, and perhaps physically abuse employees. My feeling is that customers need to understand what the limits of reasonable behaviors are in complaining. Those who behave better should get great treatment, and those who behave poorly should get the benefit of the doubt. But no one should have to put up with what they would not tolerate from a guest in their own home. My proposal is that this system should be beefed up with marketing and promotional tools that encourage good behavior by the customers when they complain, and clear rules that customers and employees both understand about how much the employee is expected to take before protecting him- or herself. After you read and apply the ideas in this book (which are certainly sound as far as they go in defining many aspects of the opportunity), think about where else you would benefit from hearing more complaints. If your spouse and children don't complain, is it possible that you are avoiding hearing complaints at the cost of having a poorer relationship with them that cannot bear much honest communication? Who would you like to receive more complaints from? How can you encourage those complaints?
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