"Customer dissatisfaction is a cockroach. If you see one, there are 100s that you cannot see."
— Molson Hart (CEO, Viahart)
Think about how many times a customer was dissatisfied but not enough to make a formal complaint about it.
And think about how many such quietly dissatisfied customers exist for each one that complains about some aspect of your product to customer service.
For a single customer who complains, there are 10 waiting for someone to speak up, and 100 others who are sharing not-so-favourable opinions about your brand amongst their friends and peers.
And these dissatisfied customers will jump ship as soon as a new competitor arrives on the scene. They will leave, never to come back again. But it won’t show up in the data.
The thing product people do not realise is that only a terrible experience or a brilliant experience gets reported, because the activation energy needed to go out of one’s way to leave a review is only present when the experience has been a 1/10 or a 10/10.
So, whenever you listen to a customer complain, don't tell yourself,
"Oh well, it's just a one-off."
No, you can't do that.
You have to approach the problem like it's a cockroach infestation. If you see one, there are probably hundreds you haven't seen yet.
Talk to the customer in good faith, identify the root cause of their dissatisfaction, and make the fix.
“The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it.”
— Jeff Bezos
