Remember when you called up a vendor’s customer service hot line to relay a complaint and was left with the impression that nobody really cared. The most frustrating thing is to call for service and feel like your comments are falling on deaf ears.

Think about it. Your future success depends on feedback from customers on what they like and don’t like. Hertz claims that some of their best service innovations evolved out of service complaints. If this is the case, then why not empower and encourage your employees who deal with your customers to gather and escalate customer service issues?

Yes it is important to handle calls expeditiously. Yes it is important to reduce the time it takes to answer the next customer call. It is also equally important to capture, acknowledge and respond to customer issues. The customers complaining about your process are doing you a favor. They are doing something that most of your other customers decided not to do. Those customers are doing their complaining by taking their business elsewhere.

As you lead your business forward, don’t forget you are only as good as the service you provide today. Great customer service is a result of being on top of your customer’s issues and always providing them with what they need the way they want it. Needs and wants are fluid and always subject to change. Your process must be flexible enough to change with the times. Your employees must be flexible enough to capture this critical information and encouraged to forward it on to the people who have the power to act.

This goes for both the internal and external customer. As a leader of your team, are you in tune with the comments you are hearing from your employees on what they need from you to succeed?