A Welcome Opportunity to Congratulate An Executive On A Complaint (Well) Handled

It gives me great pleasure to provide (belated) commentary on a customer complaint handled effectively, promptly, professionally, and all-round brilliantly well.

My apologies, Dan Pitt, long-serving Lower North Island Area Manager for New Zealand Couriers, that I didn't do as I promised and publish this commentary in early December when I gave my undertaking to do so . . . albeit, to be clear, you had not taken your impressive corrective actions with any intention or expectation that I would.

Here I am, though, finally getting around to keeping my own word. I wasn't about to let slide my determination to illustrate an important point:  That a customer complaint - no matter how serious, and unless it is reflective of wholesale systemic malfunction - can almost always be converted into a positive outcome, if handled with genuine concern, integrity, and an action-based approach towards resolution. (And preferably also, used as an opportunity for broader-based systems and/or attitudinal improvement.)

Resurrecting A Bad Situation & Doing the Brand Proud

On all the above counts, New Zealand Couriers' Dan Pitt did his brand proud. Which is just as well, because there are / were some pretty awful characters at lower levels in the organisation that appeared intent on doing as much damage to the brand as possible.

I won't repeat the story; readers can review it here. Suffice to say, that it involved a reasonably new and very lazy, abusive, recalcitrant, brand-embarrassing contracted courier.

Similarly, I won't go into the details of how this regional manager dealt with the courier in question. What I will go into is his admirable overall modus operandi with regard to how he handled my complaint.

The timely, logical, methodical and high-integrity manner in which he addressed, and worked through, the case, were in fact very similar to another review I provided to my readers some months back i.e. the exemplary approach of the Chief Executive of a private hospital group.

In Summary:

• Mr Pitt contacted me immediately my emailed communications made their way down the line from the national call centre (who had been a total joke, or rather, had enjoyed trying to make a joke of ME), taking full responsibility for all aspects of the situation (despite the fact that most were nothing to do with him), expressing unreserved apologies on behalf of the entire company, and telling me exactly what steps he would be taking and the exact dates on which he would be taking them.

• Impressively, a key point of action was to drive personally from his regional office base in Palmerston North, to the company's Masterton depot, to personally confront the courier in question (made even more impressive if you knew the huge geographic territory he manages).

• Immediately the above actions were taken, he phoned me again, to report that these had indeed been taken. Albeit he did not disclose (and I did not want him to) the full suite of disciplinary measures, certainly they had involved the reduction of the courier's geographic territory, based on keeping her as far away from me, my neighbours, and my street, as possible.

In all, several phone calls were had between he and I, as he worked through this process. On each occasion, he again offered his unreserved apologies on behalf of the entire organisation.

When A Good Manager Gets Let Down by Someone Who Was Given A Real, And Undeserved, Opportunity

It wasn't too long into the above process that I started to feel very, very badly for this particularly loyal and extremely genuine senior manager.

He confided in me his embarrassment that it had, in fact, been himself who had interviewed and appointed this total disappointment of a contractor. I could hear the shame and regret in his voice, and it pained me to know that he had taken the matter so personally.

In closing, if that horrible, undeserving contracted courier is, by chance, reading this follow-up article, I hope you take at least a few minutes to reflect on the humiliation you caused a good manager, who gave you a real chance in an iconic modern-day Kiwi company.

If you yourself had even a small fraction of his level of integrity, you'd re-channel some of your own pity time regarding your reduced income, towards the grief you caused hm and the shame you brought to the New Zealand Couriers brand . . . and so very publicly, too.