Okay, good afternoon everyone.
Today a bit of an unusual setting.
We're going to have two units, two sessions, one after the other, with no break.
So this is a test for resilience and perseverance.
And I hope that all of you survive it.
So the first session is techniques for managing complaints, and the second session is delegation, negotiation and influence.
Two sessions, one after the other, no break. Let's see how many of you survive.
My name is Professor Sam Vaknin. You can call me Sam.
And let us start by our favorite topic. Complaining. We all love to complain.
There are two types of complaints. The first type is when something is unsatisfactory. Something doesn't meet your standards or expectations. Something negates or contradicts what you have been led to believe.
And the second type of complaint is when something is unacceptable. It could be, for example, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable decisions or choices.
So these are the two types.
But when do we complain? What is the psychology behind complaining?
When there is a gap between expectations and reality. When reality does not meet our expectations, the outcome is anxiety. It makes us anxious.
It's as if the world is hostile or unpredictable or indeterminate and we need to get things straight. We need to create a meeting spot or a meeting place between reality and expectations.
There is a belief in self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is when we know how to act, how to operate within a given environment or on a given environment in order to guarantee and extricate favorable outcomes.
If we know how to do our job, if we know how to function in a relationship and the outcomes are favorable and we are happy, then we have a sense of self-efficacy.
But if there is a gap between expectations and reality, our sense of self-efficacy is challenged.
It's as if we are not good enough somehow, or maybe we have been cheated and deceived. Something is wrong in any case.
The structure and order and justice of the universe are being challenged.
And so at that point there is frustration.
In 1939 there was a psychologist by the name of Dollard, and Dollard suggested that frustration invariably translates into aggression.
And this is known, not surprisingly, as a frustration-aggression hypothesis.
So when we get frustrated, we become aggressive and we attempt to communicate this aggression.
For example, we become angry, or we become demanding, or we become nagging. These are all forms of aggression and passive aggression.
And they all reflect our underlying discomfort and unease, the frustration that we cannot resolve in any other way.
We attempt to fix the environment, to modify the behaviors of the people who are frustrating us.
Now all this long introduction into the psychology of unease and discomfort is actually about complaining, because the complaint is like the tip of an iceberg. It is the visible part of these internal psychological processes that are very powerful and could be overwhelming.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because you need to take complaints very seriously.
Even if the complaint is expressed in a tender way, gentle way, even if the complaint is communicated, couched, in a civil language, even if there's no hint of aggression or anger, you need to take complaint seriously because they indicate deep-set negative psychological processes. And you don't want these processes to get out of hand.
A complaint is an alarm, is an alert. The complaint informs you that something has gone alright, something has gone wrong and you need to work on it.
Complaints, in other words, need to be managed.
Now, there are three elements to the management of complaints.
You need to appear to be managing the complaint. You need to make your conduct, you need to make your choice to manage the complaint, to tackle it, to deal with it. You need to make this visible. You need to make this ostentatious. You need to communicate to the complaining party.
I care about you. I am worried by your complaint, I intend to tackle it, I intend to study and go in depth into it, and I have every intention of resolving it.
Appearances matter. If you're indifferent, if you're offhanded, if you are perfunctory, then you're likely to aggravate the situation, make the complaining party even more aggressive and more angry.
You need to appear to be interested in the complaint and in the psychological plight of the complainant.
Point number two, you need to effect change.
You need to change something, something structural, something operational, something behavioral, maybe the way you talk and communicate. Something needs to change. Change and transformation are the tools, the main tools of complaint management.
Element number three, you need to establish feedback procedures.
You need to make sure that the complainant is fully informed in a transparent manner as to how you are managing the complaint and dealing with it. You need to make the complainant your partner.
Now you're both partners in the management of the complaint.
So these are the three elements.
Appear to tackle the complaint, change, whatever needs to be changed, and communicate repeatedly, all the time, consistently, with the lodger of the complaint, with the complainant.
Complaints can come from the inside. They could be internally generated. These are known as endogenous complaints.
And complaints can come from the outside. They could be externally generated. These are known as exogenous complaints.
You need to tackle both of them with equal respect and equal dedication and determination to resolve them.
Complaints convey to you information, critical information about the way you function, the way your institutions function, the way your company functions. Complaints contain critical, priceless information.
You need to glean this information, and you need to create impressions. You need to manage impressions. Not as a facade. You don't need to fake or to pretend, but you need to be on the same page with a complainant.
Complaints are therefore change agents. Complaints induce change.
You should not avoid complaints. You should perhaps prevent complaints. You should engage in preemptive policy. We will talk about it in a minute.
But you should not silence complaints. You should not ignore complaints. You should not ridicule complaints. You should not be always right. You should not be grandiose. You should not be defensive.
These are wrong policies. They aggravate the situation. They exacerbate the underlying problem.
Never avoid complaints.
In some situations, you may even wish to solicit complaints. For example, if you are launching a new product, you would like to know what are the bugs and glitches in the product. So you would solicit complaints.
That's an example where complaints are a useful management tool and integrate seamlessly into the research and development process.
The complainants, the people who make complaints, they are not your enemies.
Don't develop a siege mentality. Don't become paranoid. Don't fight back. There's no fight here. You are all on the same side. The people who make the complaints want to get your product better, want to make your service more palatable, want to make you more perfect.
Help them. Consider people who make complaints as your partners, network with such people because they teach you invaluable lessons.
Now, of course, you should not on purpose create a bad product or provide a shoddy service or misbehave in order to generate complaints. On the contrary, you should do your best to anticipate possible complaints and bugs and glitches and misbehaviors. You should anticipate this, and you should try to preempt complaints. You should have a preemptive policy.
How doyou do that?
You simulate simulations. Simulations are very important.
You simulate business processes, political campaign processes, behavior, relationships. Everything can be simulated.
When you simulate things, you come across problems. You come across the points at which complaints may arise.
Simulations allow you to tackle complaints in advance and to prevent them.
Another tool is known as focus groups.
Assemble people who are likely to be your consumers, who are likely to be in a relationship with you, who are likely to interact with you one way or another, be they are likely to be your suppliers, your customers, your intimate partners, assemble such people and talk to them. Talk to them in a process known as focus groups.
Focus groups usually allow you to identify and ferret out problems, issues, defects, glitches and bugs well in advance. It's a very powerful tool.
Talk to other people. even monitor your competitors, monitor them, study them, gather information, read the literature. All these activities would allow you to reach and attain an asymptotic state of perfection, almost perfection. And to prevent an onslaught and avalanche of complaints later on in the road.
Who is complaining? Who is more likely to complain? Is there a profile? Is there a typical profile of a complainant?
Admittedly, some people with specific mental health profiles, specific psychological profiles, and specific mental health disorders or even mental health illnesses, such people are much more likely to complain, admittedly.
People with passive-aggressive personality, people with borderline personality, these kind of people, people with mood disorders, these kind of people are much more likely to complain.
But you are bound to receive complaints from mentally stable, utterly normal and healthy people. The bulk of complaints come from such people.
So you can't blame complaints on the personality of the complainant. You can't say, I'm ignoring this complaint. I'm discarding this complaint because the guy who made the complaint is crazy or the woman who made the complaint is unstable. You can't do this. This is not good policy.
First of all, you are not qualified to diagnose mental health issues.
And the second thing is, as I said, the majority of complaints are well-meaning. People complain because they want to see things better, not because they want to take you down, not because they want to destroy your life, not because they want to ruin your business, but because they want to see things better for themselves and for future, consumers or customers or stakeholders.
So the sources of complaints are unlimited. All stakeholders can complain.
I mentioned suppliers, customers, consumers that's in business. But in personal relationships, your friends can complain about you. Your wife can complain about you. Your husband can complain about you. Your own children can complain about you. People around you have the right and capacity to complain because you are not perfect. No one is.
So anticipate complaints all the time. Don't be defensive and don't be angry.
And complaints can also come from people who are not stakeholders. They are not directly involved in your life. Observers.
So if you're a public figure, the media can complain about you. Other public figures can exert judgment over you.
We live in an environment where feedback is built into technology. Feedback is the key essential component of modern technology and of modern life.
Feedback, not all feedback is positive. A lot of feedback is negative.
And you need to learn to cope with this in a productive and constructive way, not in a petulant and rageful way. This would lead you nowhere. This would only increase and enhance the incoming tsunami of complaints.
Now some complaints are more serious than others. When consumers complain, when customers complain, when suppliers complain, it's unpleasant, it could even lead to legal ramifications, but it's not the end of the world.
However, there's a type of complaints that you need to take very seriously.
And these are regulatory complaints, complaints by regulatory agencies, complaints by law enforcement. These could lead to criminal prosecutions or civil lawsuits and could end very badly, financially or worse.
Some types of complaints are built into the fabric of our life. Some types of complaints are formalized and they carry sanctions. These types of complaints need immediate attention and you need to employ, avail yourself of the services of professionals, accountants, lawyers.
Do not try to tackle formal complaints by yourself. Do not think that you are know-all, that you don't need anyone, that you can rely on your intuition. Do not think that you can fob your way off, that you can pull the wool over people's eyes, that you can pretend and fake it till you make it.
These are bad strategies when it comes to all types of complaints, but these are disastrous, life-threatening strategies when it comes to formalized complaints, regulatory complaints, law enforcement complaints.
Arm yourself, lawyer up, be prepared, and know how to distinguish between complaints that can get out of hand and endanger your business and maybe your existence and freedom and complaints that are well-meaning and run of the mill.
Differentiating between the types of complaints and their possible outcomes is very crucial.
Now, we can divide complaints into various types. There's a typology or nosology of complaints.
So there are complaints about broken promises. The product is not the same way it is described in the user's manual. Or the advertising was misleading, false advertising, or whatever.
So these are broken promises, complaints about broken promises.
You can have complaints about broken promises in internet relationships, for example. Future faking. Future faking is when you make promises about the future that you have no intentions to keep. That's an example of broken promises, complaints about broken promises.
Then there are complaints about frustrated expectations.
You can't be responsible for what's going inside people's minds. You can't be fully responsible for people's expectations, people's dreams, people's fantasies. You are not God and most of you are not even therapists.
So there's no way for you to control the internal psychodynamics, the internal psychological processes in people's minds and brains and heads.
People develop expectations. They superimpose their own dreams and fantasies on your product, on your service, on your personality, on your relationships.
And you can't be responsible for this, not fully.
And so managing frustrated expectations is a major problem because reality often flies in the face of these expectations, defies them. Reality is very far removed from expectations.
And how to manage the gap between reality and expectations is the sine qua non and the number one, two and three priorities in complaints management.
Next, ambiguous information.
If you provide information, again, never mind the setting, the setting could be a business setting, could be a political campaign, could be an institution, could be an intimate relationship, could be your relationship with your children, could be school, the setting doesn't matter.
The psychology is the same. The management techniques are the same.
If you provide information that is ambiguous, that is equivocal, that can be interpreted in two ways or three ways or nine ways, if you are on purpose, fuzzy, you don't commit yourself, you're not clear, intentionally, manipulatively, you want to manipulate people, and so on so forth. This is likely to backfire. It's likely to yield a mountain range of complaints.
And so the good strategy, the proper strategy in the long term, is to be very clear, very clear about who you are, very clear about what you produce, unambiguous about the service you give, utterly transparent about everything in your relationship.
Honesty prevents friction. Friction prevents frustration, frustration prevents aggression.
I'm not telling you to be naive. I'm not telling you to be gullible. I'm not telling you to share everything with everyone. I'm not telling you to overshare, and there are some things that better remain hidden, even in relationships.
I know all this, but when you do decide to communicate, you may decide to not communicate, but when you do decide to communicate, be clear, be honest, be concise, be transparent. This would save you a lot of sweat and tears and blood in the future.
Your responses should always be unequivocal. This is especially true when a complaint has been lodged.
A complaint has been lodged. Now you have two options.
You could be defensive and evasive. You could evade the complaint. You could talk around it. You can try to drown the complainant with verbiage. You could try to create a smoke screen. You can try to stonewall. You can try to be there and not be there. A choreography of absence.
This kind of smarmy fakery, this kind of pretension to honesty, pseudo-honesty, this has disastrous consequences.
It aggravates the other party. It creates enormous frustration, rage, aggression and anger. It creates, it generates and fosters escalation.
Your dishonesty in tackling a complaint could escalate the complaint into a war, a battle, which you're not always guaranteed to win.
Why do that? If someone went to the bother, because to file a complaint, to file a complaint, is a lot of work.
People need to analyze the situation, the product, the service, the relationship, then they need to think it over, then they need to commit things to paper, then they revise the initial draft, and then they revise the revision of the initial draft.
People put a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of emotional investment into the complaint.
Don't take it lightly. This is a serious issue.
Show respect. Show respect. Be respectful.
The person or the institution or whoever lodged the complaint, brought to your attention a flaw, a problem.
Respect them. If you can't be grateful, a problem, respect them.
If you can't be grateful, because you should be grateful, but if you can't be grateful for some reason, at least respect them.
And the way to show respect is to take the complaint seriously, to work on it, to study it, and when you do respond, respond in a way that makes clear that you've invested a lot of effort, and this is what you came up with, that you are being honest and transparent and non-evasive, and that your aim is to improve matters to remedy, not to fob off, not to fend off, and definitely not to inflict damage on the complainant.
Any attempt to harm the person or the institution or whoever filed a complaint is disastrous strategy.
It may be a reflexive reaction. A complaint is kind of narcissistic injury. A complaint is hurtful. Complaint is painful. A complaint damages our self-esteem. A complaint challenges our sense of grandiosity, or self-perception, self-image.
So many people react to complaints aggressively. Many people want to destroy the source of the complaint. They want to litigate. They want to spread rumors. They embark on smear campaigns. They destroy the reputation of the person who lodged a complaint. The person who dared to file a complaint. The person who took everything, made everything visible in public.
There's a lot of anger. And so there's a need to ruin that person, to eradicate and obliterate and extirperate this person, to leave nothing out of that person who lodged the complaint or that institution or whoever.
The source of the complaint is none of your business. The complaint is your business.
I'm going to repeat this because this is the core message in complaint management.
The source of the complaint is not your business. It is the complaint that is your business.
So tackle the complaint. Do not tackle the source of the complaint.
If you try to damage or harm the source of the complaint, it will backfire. Statistically, 100 out of 100 times. Not 95, not 91, not 83, 100 out of 100 times.
When you try to punish, penalize the source of the complaint, it will backfire on you. And you will pay a heavy price.
So don't.
Maintain communication that is regular. Maintain communication that is, as I said, transparent, structured and predictable.
For example, fixed times for communication, prearranged and pre-agreed dates and hours.
Appoint someone, if it's an organization or a company or institution and you can afford it, and there is sufficient manpower, appoint someone to tackle the complaint.
In governments, we have an ombudsman, yeah. Appoint someone to tackle the complaint.
Whatever the case may be, even if you are a sole proprietor, self-employed, treat the complaint seriously, communicate regularly with the complainant and work together to resolve the issue.
Do not engage in unfair practices. Do not be unjust. Do not be selfish. Do not exclude the other and do not regard the other as for some reason inferior to you or worthy of less consideration.
Complaints localize and identify for you these functions. Complaints point the way to errors, mistakes, wrong turning points, breakdowns. Complaints are invaluable.
Actually, in some organizations, there are people whose role is to complain.
For example, in many governments, there is a government appointee, a government official, whose role is to complain about the other government ministries.
Complaints are crucial.
And when you manage complaints, there are stages.
Number one, acknowledge the complaint. Acknowledge the receipt of the complaint.
Don't leave the complainant in outer space awaiting indefinitely a response from you, which may or may not come.
This aggravates. This creates frustration and anger. Don't do this.
Immediately, acknowledge receipt of the complaint.
If you can, recap in your own words, the content of the complaint, so that the complainant understand that you understand the complainant.
If you recap the content of the complaint, the complainant understands that you understand. This creates commonality, common ground, solidarity, reduces aggression.
Number two, validate the complaint.
Do not tell the complainant that is wrong, that is evil, that is stupid. Validate the complaint. Validate the complainant if you can't validate the complaint.
If you disagree with the complaint, if you think the complainant is wrong, validate the complainant's emotions at least.
Tell the complainant, I understand you, I understand your concern, I'm looking into it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Do not invalidate, do not invalidate the complainant. Do not attack the complainant ad hominem personally. It's bad policy.
Do not minimize the complaint. Do not undermine the complaint. Do not underestimate the complaint. Do not ignore the complaint. Do not deny the complaint.
Show empathy. Empathize with the complainant. Something is bothering the complainant. Otherwise, the complainant would not have reached out to you with a complaint. Something is bothering them.
If you can't agree with the content of the complaint, at least, at least be compassionate. At least understand and accept that the people who made the complaint are not feeling well about it. They're not happy. They're unsettled. They're discomfited.
Help them. Help them to feel better, provide succor, be empathic.
Empathy is the core skill in managing complaints.
Put yourself in the complainant's shoes. Ask yourself, had I been in the complainant shoes, would I have made the complaint?
And if the answer is yes, fix it. Just fix it.
Number two, study the complaint.
Study the complaint immediately and then study it again, and then study it a third time and then give it to someone else to express their opinion, preferably an expert.
Study the complaint yourself, by yourself, study the complaint with experts, study the complaint with your workers, employees, study the complaint with your bosses.
Do not hide complaints.
If someone complained against you, do not hide the complaint from your boss or from the organization. If someone complained against you, don't hide it from your wife or your husband. Or don't hide complaints from your wife or your female husband. Or don't hide complaints.
When you hide complaints, they become secrets. And secrets are poisonous. They're venomous.
Take the complaint out into the open. Sunshine and sunlight disinfects complaints. Take them into the open, study them, ask other people to help you, to show you different points of view, to give you their expertise maybe. Check yourself and then check yourself again. Time and again.
Don't be sure. Don't be self-assured. Don't be cocky. Don't be arrogant. Don't be haughty. Don't be grandiose.
Be humble. Complaints should humble you. Should humble you.
Because even if you didn't get anything wrong in the product, even if you didn't get anything wrong in the service, even if you think you've been an angel in the relationship, the complaint tells you that your counterparty, your customer, your consumer, your girlfriend, your counterparty is not happy.
You failed in making someone happy. You have failed in making someone happy.
They should make you humble, humility.
And now, from a position of humility, embark on fixing the complaint, on remediation, on restoration. Try to make things better.
There is a word in German, wieder gut machen, making things better, or making things as they used to be in some cases.
If necessary, as part of the exercise of humility, as part of the new experience of being humble, apologize.
If it is called for, if you think you've really wronged someone, you've really done something which you shouldn't have done, you've made a choice that you shouldn't have made.
Do not hesitate, to apologize, and be transparent, and if necessary, go public.
Going public with your mistakes and the way you fix them has a beneficial impact.
Even in terms of brand, if you have a brand and you are cognizant of the brand, going public admitting that the brand has had glitches or bugs or problems, and they were fixed promptly and courteously and empathically, this is a positive impact on the brand, not a negative one.
Hiding complaints, evading complaints, denying complaints, this has a negative impact on a brand. Some brands were completely ruined by such practices.
Clarity, honesty, transparency, humility, empathy. These are the keys to proper management of complaints.
Now, some people use complaints and the complaining procedure as destructive instruments of destruction.
Everything can be abused. Everything is a malignant version. Everything can go wrong. Even the most well-meaning things can end up, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Complaints are not exempt.
Some people make use of complaints the way you would make use of a battering ram. They weaponize complaints. Complaints are spurious, complaints are obstructive, aggressive, passive aggressive, nagging.
And so you need to establish a policy, a procedure on how to deal with recurrent complaints, how to deal with people who weaponize complaints.
People who don't really care about the essence of the complaint, don't really care about you, your organization, your relationship, your whatever. People who use complaints sadistically, they enjoy the disruption, the discomfort, the anxiety that they produce by complaining.
So this is called negativism, by the way, in psychology. You need to be prepared for such people.
If you are moderately successful in any field, if you are in a relationship with a highly specific type of personality, if there are such people in your family where whatever the setting may be, some institutions are like that, you may come face to face with people who abuse the complaints process.
Misuse it. They misuse it.
A complaint is access. When you give someone the right to complain, you give them access to you, to yourself.
If I have a right to complain against you, that means I have access to you.
And some people abuse this access. They misuse this access to torment you, to torture you, to destroy your life.
And you need to have a procedure, a policy regarding such people. And this policy needs to be implemented, and it needs to be unwavering, it needs to include sanctions, and it needs to be forthright and strong uncompromising.
These people, if you let them in, they are going to metastasize like cancer and they will destroy everything.
But they are, luckily, a tiny, tiny minority.
In the vast majority of cases, people who make complaints are essentially well-meaning. They want to communicate to you the state of mind, I'm unhappy, I'm angry, or they want you to get better, to get better, make a better product, provide a better service.
So they're well-meaning, the overwhelming vast majority. A tiny, tiny minority is disruptive and sadistic and bad faith, bad intention.
So remember what not to do.
It's as important as remembering what to do.
Remember to never ignore a complaint, never deny a complaint, never invalidate the complainant, never repress the complaint, never reframe the complaint, pretend that the complaint is wrong because the story is actually different. This is called reframing.
Never play around with the complaint. Just tackle it. Just get to the point. Don't engage in metaphysics, the philosophy of the complaint, the environment of the complaint, the psychology of the complainant. It's none of your business. Tackle the bloody complaint.
There is information contained in every complaint. Ascertain that this information is accurate or inaccurate. Vet some of the claims, discard and ignore those who are evidently wrong, but tackle the complaint and then communicate the outcome.
It's very simple. There's nothing to it. Acknowledge a complaint, empathize with a complainant, tackle the complaint, communicate the outcomes. End of story. Don't make a big deal out of it.
If you aggrandize the situation, if you explode it, I mean, it's going to get out of hand, out of control, and it's going to ruin you and everything you cherish.
Why? What for? In 99.99% of the cases, if you tackle a complaint on arrival, the minute it arrives, and you do a good job of it, a reasonably good job of it, it will go away. It will be resolved. End of story.
If you try to be too clever by half, then it's going to backfire and ruin you.
The general lessons from complaints, as I said at the very beginning, are invaluable. They can allow you to restructure, restructure your company, restructure the institution you're in charge of, restructure your political campaign, restructure your family, restructure your relationships, restructure, rebuild, deconstruct and reconstruct.
The famous economist, Schumpeter, Schumpeter called it creative destruction.
Complaints are forms of creative destruction. They are destructive in some ways. In some ways they are destructive, of course. They are very often obstructive, but in the long term, they lead to creativity. They lead to solutions.
And restructuring is one of them. Redesigning products. Redesigning flows within an organization.
What is a complaint?
A complaint is a form of market research.
You know, some companies hire agencies for market research. You know, some companies hire agencies for market research.
And these agencies go around and they ask what do you think about this product and what do you think about this service?
So this is market research.
A complaint is a form of market research, free of charge. You don't have to pay anyone.
The complaint tells you how your product is doing, the positioning of your product, the flaws in your product, the problems in your procedures and workflows, your services, etc. It's free, free of charge, honest, truthful market research.
Isn't it a much better way to look at it? Isn't this a much more positive frame of mind to deal with complaints?
It's research and development.
A complaint could tackle a specific feature of your product. And then you change the feature and your product is a hundred times better. This is research and development.
A complaint can tell you where is the bottleneck? The bottleneck in a service you're giving.
And then you remove the bottleneck and you redesign the flow of the service. And suddenly you have 40% more clients and 60% additional income. Wasn't it worth it?
A complaint within your relationship tells you where you're getting things wrong, where you're destroying the relationship.
You sit back. You see the other party's point of view. You validate the other party and you change your behavior.
You change your behavior and the relationship is stronger than ever. Isn't it worth it?
Complaints are the pathway to perfection. Complaints are the pathway to self-improvement. Complaints are the pathway to success.
Complaints are the pathway to self-improvement. Complaints are the pathway to success.
Complaints are positive things. They are not negative things.
They inform planning, they inform thinking, they inform performance. They affect all the dimensions of life itself.
So next time you receive a complaint, be happy. Be thankful. And leverage this crisis as an opportunity.
There is an apocryphal story that the idiogram in Chinese that represents the word crisis is also the ideogram that represents the word opportunity.
Let me tell you, this is not true, it's absolutely not true, but it should have been true because every crisis is indeed an opportunity.
Thank you for listening. We'll take now five minutes break, no longer, and we'll go to the next session, which deals with, as I said, delegation, negotiation and influence. Thank you.