Unless you gather it properly
Bill Gates once said: “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” It sounds logical and reasonable. But if you use it as the only source of such information, it may lead you astray and bias your strategic thinking.
Maybe this is why few of the MS Windows users I know are big fans of the operating system.
But there is a better way, simple and complex at the same time.
Customers seek revenge. But only a few of them
Twenty years ago, unsatisfied customers could merely grumble and complain to their co-workers. These days, they’ve got a powerful weapon against companies that don’t do their job properly: social media.
A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article that said that “the percentage of consumers who have taken action to settle a score against a company through measures such as pestering or public shaming in person or online, has tripled to 9% from 3% in 2020, according to the study.”
So, unhappy customers are going public and seeking revenge by sharing sarcastic stories of their bad experiences on the internet. The fact that the number of such people has tripled since 2020 is impressive.
But, according to some sources, “Only 1 in 26 customers will tell a business about their negative experience; according to customer service facts, the rest simply leave.”
So, only about 3.85% of unhappy customers raise their voices and complain — not too many.
Moreover, some of these active complainers are people whose allegations are unjustified.
Some customers regularly complain solely because they believe the world is unfair to them, and they look for restoration of justice.
A part of these 3.85% of clients are driven by a bad mood — and it has nothing to do with your product.
So, only a fraction of your truly unhappy customers may (or may not) tell you what exactly is wrong with your product. We must listen to them and consider their opinions, but this is not enough.