After the backlash CrowdStrike faced this week, you’d be forgiven for being doubtful about this heading. The company offered a $10 Uber Eats voucher (have a coffee on us) for its partners and teammates who experienced extra work because of the Global IT outage. It’s not gone down well with some. Worse still, due to the volume of people using the voucher code, Uber Eats has flagged it as fraud and blocked some claimants from accessing the voucher, compounding the anger that people feel towards this screw-up.
It is possible to turn a screw-up into a victory - if you follow a common-sense approach to complaints and grievances. In research conducted by a car hire company, it was shown that customer satisfaction ratings for the organisation in question, were 87% when complaints were received and appropriate compensation was offered; however, in contrast, the company received an 83% rating when no complaints were experienced! The key word here is ‘appropriate’, I’ll return to this later.
A complaint or a grievance is another opportunity to negotiate – the nature of the problem here is an event occurring outside of an agreed formal or informal contract. There is best practice – depending upon whether you’re making the complaint or receiving it.
If it’s your complaint, don’t queue up e.g., at the hotel reception intent on just having a ‘whinge’ like the other twenty people in front of you. Be proactive, tell the front desk what the nature of the problem is and what you would like them to do about it. Make it specific and reasonable against the size of the issue.
In the past, I’ve been on the receiving end of other people’s complaints, and (I know), the advice is different in this situation. Firstly, never, interrupt your complainant – let them rant, vent their spleen, get it off their chest, if needs be – they will feel better for it. Actively listen to all the points they’ve made. Then summarise back what you’ve heard, in a calm and measured way. Demonstrate that you have given them your full attention and that you’ve digested what they’ve said - it can make a big difference, be genuine in your interest and concern with the problem.
Once you’re sure they’ve finished, ask them what they want you to do to make things right – be authentic and sincere. About a third of the time, people will want an apology, another third of the time they may ask for small compensation (if it is your screw-up and the punishment fits the crime, why not?), the last third may ask for more than you are prepared to offer. It may be necessary to politely structure the expectations of these people and see if reasonable compensation can be repackaged.
The point is, that you need to engage with your claimant (even if it’s with a representative sample if the collective number of people is that big) to find out what is appropriate, don’t just assumptively throw a $10 Uber Eats at them. It may cost you money when genuine interest, empathy and respect are valued more highly.
The stakes for CrowdStrike could be very high. According to reports, its clients could face up to £4.1bn in financial losses from the outage (excluding Microsoft). I have a feeling that ‘appropriate’ compensation will not be found at the bottom of a recyclable coffee cup!
Sam Macbeth, 26th July 2024
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