Thank you for complaining.
Complainers be complaining. It’s in their nature, right? In customer service we definitely hear our fill of complaints. You could work at the best museum in the world and you would still get complaints from someone, about something. I’ve heard it all. The house is too hot, the house is way too cold, there isn’t enough grass, there’s too much grass and not enough pathways, there aren’t enough flowers, the flowers are only orchids and roses, the historic house looks too old, it’s too humid, it’s too sunny, it rained on my visit, the gardens should be covered…. I could go on. Really, I could.
In a webinar I attended some time ago the speaker said something to the effect of “whenever I get a visitor complaint, I’m so grateful!” I found it so ridiculous that it stuck with me. I even mentioned it to my Visitor Services colleague and we laughed at it. Why would someone be grateful for a complaint? Frustrated, angry, defensive… yes. But not grateful. I hate getting visitor complaints. I hate spending all my time responding to them with long apologetic but unwavering-in-our-policy emails. I really hate having to deal with a complaint over the phone (I’m a millennial and I try to avoid actual phone calls). I hate social media reviews so much that I don’t go anywhere near them. I tell my staff on a busy day that if we got 1 complaint out of 2,000 visitors, that’s pretty good. But I still internalize it and spend the rest of my night at home mulling over that 1 complaint. I take it as a personal affront. Like they are coming into my workplace and saying that I am not doing a good enough job. How many times have I said I wish I could go to their place of business and stand in front of them and yell and complain about their work. All that said, it’s very apparent that I probably have not had a very healthy relationship with complaints.
I think my hatred of complaints stems from my rule-following nature. I am an INFJ which means I like to be tactful, helpful, and cautious. I trust my gut feelings and I like organizing and creating systems. I also get passionate about ideas. I am also, unsurprisingly, an Enneagram 1, the Reformer, which basically means that I have a strong sense of right and wrong, want to be useful and always strive to improve things. So in summary, I like rules and I like when people follow the rules.
I don’t think that ‘grateful’ will ever be a natural response for me when faced with a complaint. My natural response is to get angry and defend the rules. Policy is policy for a reason and is it that hard to follow? But I’m learning, and growing. The longer I work in customer service I am starting to realize that the faster I can move on from anger and defending policy- the quicker I can move on to something that is akin to grateful, but probably a little bit closer to… I don’t know… maybe, obliged? I still don’t like complaints, but I’m beginning to find value in them. Let me tell you about it.
First, I have thought about complaints a lot and worked out that there are three different types of visitor complaints that I typically deal with. The first type of complaint is the Out of My Control Complaint. Like the weather. When a visitor complains that it’s too hot outside in the summer in Florida, and thus has ruined their visit…. I do not roll my eyes at them, no. Yes, it is hot. In the summer. In Florida. You are correct. Or when it rains and we instantly get a million emails about transferring ticket dates and visitor complaints that their entire visit was ruined because it rained for 20 minutes in the middle of their 4 hour experience and they demand a full refund. These type of complaints are still very frustrating to me because they derive from something that is largely out of my control. I can potentially put a notice in the confirmation or our website that says “the 50 acres of gardens are not covered, please bring an umbrella in case of rain”. Though as my confirmation email grows larger and larger with rules and reminders, I wonder at what point is it the responsibility of the visitor to use their commonsense vs the responsibility of the museum to give them warning of every possible scenario?
The second type of complaint is the Policy, Procedure or Services Complaint. These are about a service you’re providing that doesn’t meet expectations, or a policy or procedure that the visitor doesn’t like, can’t or won’t follow, or wasn’t aware of. This is the most common type of complaint that I get. Often these complaints come from the visitor feeling frustrated, embarrassed, angry, and/or in search of vindication. Usually these complaints can be avoided with some good signage, clear communication, and anticipation of all the visitor’s needs and wants. But wow is that hard! That is a large part of my job, and I/we get it wrong constantly. It’s hard to anticipate the needs of every visitor. It’s especially hard to do that if you have a limited budget, limited staff, time, resources, and tackles an issue that is cross-departmental. We don’t have a coat check, which is out of my control. We’re a historic house museum with limited space and no purpose-built visitor center so there’s nowhere to put luggage, coats, umbrellas, etc. But communicating that to the visitor is within my control. Somewhat. I can work with the marketing department to warn the visitor in advance on our website, add it to the confirmation, etc. Though again, it seems the more information we add to the pre-visit communications, the less likely the visitor will see it or read it anyways. And then what do we do if someone arrives coming straight from the airport with luggage, unaware that we don’t have a coat check? Do we turn them away, or have we anticipated this and come up with a make-shift solution?
Another example that comes to mind of a policy, procedure or services complaint was when a visitor was irate, and I mean screaming at me, at the Main House front entrance because though we have 5 languages (the languages spoken in our top 5 visitation demographics) we do not have German, which ranks pretty low in our visitation demographics. She was a leader for a German bus company and was upset that we didn’t have a brochure in German. This is within my control, somewhat, right? I could advocate for our brochures to be printed in German and anticipate that this would be helpful for not just this bus company but for a small percentage of our regular visitors as well. However, if I used the resources and money that I have budgeted for design and print to make German brochures, I would then no longer be able to print enough brochures in our top markets (English and Spanish) and then way more people would be upset at me than just this one bus group leader. That’s not to say that I don’t want her to be happy. Remember, I mull over that 1 complaint. Sometimes though, I approach these complaints by considering a.) I’m one person and need to choose what battles to fight, and b.) are there any creative solutions that I could come up with to avoid using up my budget, but still show our German visitors that we do value them? Maybe something digital, or an in-house printed translation that is laminated and loaned out when requested.
The third type of complaint is about a Human Interaction Complaint. Usually this involves my staff, though on occasion it has been a visitor to visitor interaction. This type of complaint is similar to the second in that it is something I have some, but not total control over. I can train the staff in customer service and lead by example, but ultimately, I can’t control what they say or do and sometimes they might say/do something unintentional that the visitor interprets the wrong way. I receive a fair amount of these also, and probably more now in the post-COVID world. People arrive to the museum in all different emotional states, bringing with them stress from the outside world, and expectations that are sometimes outside our potential to meet. One time I received a complaint in the form of an email from a visitor who had been escorted off the property for not following procedure after being asked several times. This sounds like a policy, procedure and services complaint but hang on. I found out who was involved and spoke with the staff person about it. She told me that she asked them several times to wear a mask, the visitor said they were ‘being hounded’ about it, she eventually called Security to get involved and as the visitor was being escorted out she yelled back at him (mocking his southern accent) “you have a good day now, you hear”. It took me a few minutes to get over the shock of what she was telling me. Neither one was in the right, but as an organization we certainly should be taking the high road. I replied to the visitor and sincerely apologized and let him know that while we must enforce the mask policy from the county, we were in the wrong for the way it was handled and I would speak with my staff and provide additional training.
Now, admittedly, for each of these three types of complaints I still automatically move to defense mode, regardless of whether it’s in my control or not. I take pride in my work and my staff, and when someone attacks that, how can I not get defensive about it? So how did I move from hatred of complaints to finding value in them? Well I learned how to filter. It may still not be my go-to response, but eventually I try to get to a place of being able to filter out the emotion. I filter out the emotion from all angles- take out the emotion from the visitor AND also importantly, I take out my emotion. Let me give you an example that happened earlier this year:
When we reopened to the public in May 2020 we were unable to give public tours due to county restrictions and we weren’t giving out any maps or brochures out of an abundance of safety, so in addition to discounting the price of a general admission ticket we decided to offer our audio tour for free to our guests so those who wanted it could still have some interpretation of the estate. The audio tour was previously $5 and on a loaned device. We transferred the digital files to a new platform so visitors could use their own device, create a login and not have to carry around a shared device or map.
Quickly we learned that the platform was not intuitive, the digital map was hard to find and visitors were complaining. I started to hear “oh this is asking too much”, or “I don’t have time for this” and lots of annoyed sighs. I didn’t understand why people were so irritated by this free thing we were offering them. It was free! What do I have to do to make you happy?!
For a while (probably longer than I should admit) I was annoyed. Their complaints annoyed me. I shut it out and stopped listening to the complaints because I felt justified in my annoyed state. Eventually I tuned back in and I began to put a filter on the feedback. I filtered out the emotion (on my end, and theirs). I began realizing that these were Policy, Procedure, or Services Complaints. They were upset because a service we were providing them was not meeting expectations. Once I had received the complaint(s), and calmed down from it, I sat down and tested it out for myself. And you know where this is going. It was not a seamless experience and I was surprised by how clunky it was.
After I learned that for myself, I went back and made a bunch of changes to improve the process on the platform, added more accessible digital maps, created an instructional sign, and re-trained staff. We had been receiving the feedback all along- visitors were telling us the problem, we just weren’t filtering out the information. When I was finally able to filter and separate out the emotion from the information being provided, I already had all the tools I needed to make it a more efficient service for the visitors.
When you filter out all the emotion from complaints, you can often find really valuable information. The visitor is giving you feedback on how you can improve the visitor experience. Yes, sometimes it’s a one-of and not the voice of the majority. But often the complaints we hear are repeated, and we need to tune in better to catch the meaning of what they’re really saying. Take out the emotion, and don’t stay defensive for long. If you hate complaints like me, then work towards being obliged by them. It will pay off in the long run and you’ll see the visitor experience improve, and fewer sleepless nights mulling over that 1 complaint!
Bonus Tip: I recently read a book about relationships and they offered the same advice for filtering out complaints with your partner! So basically that means that customer service professionals who are tuned in to complaints at work, can make the best life partners ;)
