Unhappy Customers Threaten Profits

Research by my colleague, Paul Linnell of CTMA, (paul.linnell@ctmaworld.com) indicates the problems customers experience, and the way many companies handle customer complaints, can place between 8% and 12% of a company’s annual profits at risk.

Only about 5% of customers complain when they experience a problem with a product or service and there are three reasons for this:

• They don’t know where or how to complain.

• They don’t think anything will be done as a result of their complaint.


• They are afraid their complaint will back fire on them.

“Although many organisations do check back with the customer to make sure “everything is OK”, very few provide their staff with appropriate training to handle customer complaints effectively,” says Paul.


This is a serious problem when you think it usual for as many as 50% of an organisation’s customers to have experienced a problem or concern with the service they receive.

How easy do you make it for your customers to tell you they are unhappy?

Or do they just tell everybody else?