Dan Johnson commented on my recent post Why is it so hard to get feedback right with such a great idea I decided to repeat it here…

My wife and I have been working on this lately, for customer service problems we run into throughout our lives. We tend to write letters and have had good results so far. It is a hard thing to get out of to not “let things go” and address issues you may have with strangers. Especially since, by nature, we tend to be pretty subdued. We never ask for anything in the letters we just state how we would like to see things improve. I have found that practicing giving feedback has made me more receptive in receiving it.

Now I won’t bore you with the details – because there is more than one post in the history of this blog about the awful customer service I have had from a bank I  invested with. Suffice to say that when I went to the branch to close both accounts I had they delivered the usual quality.

What I like about Dan’s ( and his wife’s) actions is that it allows them to take control of the situation – to benefit others. As he says they are not asking for anything but offering advice on how to improve. And I am going to take a leaf out of their book and write to the bank – not a letter of complaint ( though goodness knows it would be justified) but a letter of suggestions about how to be better next time – albeit with a different customer.