Recently, I got the opportunity to speak with Helen Dewdney, also known as The Complaining Cow. Now, she won’t be offended that I call her that, as it’s literally her brand! Helen helps people make complaints to companies, and she helps companies form their own complaints procedures to make it easier for their customers and their clients to complain to them. Read on to find out what we discussed. . .
Darren: I feel like a bit of a kindred spirit with you Helen because I’ve done a lot of complaining myself in the past, I’ve even helped out BBC Watchdog when it was doing an investigation into somebody once. Now, what is it that makes you so passionate about complaining? What is it that that’s happened that makes you want to ensure that companies provide the sort of customer service that customers deserve?
Helen: It’s a long story! As a child, I complained effectively because it was a matter of principle. Whether it was complaining against now getting paid for writing a letter for Jackie Magazine or being censored in the school magazine, it was about the principle for me. So I’ve always kept up to date with consumer law and fought for what was right for friends and family and myself, and I just see out there that people don’t know the law. They don’t know how to complain, or they get fobbed off, and it just makes me really cross. I’ve been in this field for 10 years, and before that I was in children’s services, and that was always about fighting for children’s rights. So, it’s always about fighting for what’s right for me, and that’s what’s important. When I started the blog, I saw that there was a huge gap, as people needed help.
Darren: What was the catalyst that sparked this? What was it that happened that you thought “right, I’m not having this anymore, I’m going to stand up for this I’m going to make sure this doesn’t happen again”?
Helen: I think when I was about 11 or 12 and I wrote to the Jackie Magazine as they didn’t pay me my it paid me my pound for the letter I submitted, and then I got really annoyed that they didn’t pay for the stamp. I think I pinpoint it to that really, and the time when I was at school and I’d written a piece for the school magazine. I was complaining about back then, girls playing boys and PE games and boys not playing girls. Obviously nowadays, there’s all sorts about equal opportunities, but at the time, I raised the question of what the Sex Discrimination Act would have to say about that and what the Discrimination Act had said about that. The school shut me down, they didn’t like me saying it very much, but what was interesting is it got it changed and we shook up the PE department.
So for me, that was the big thing – you’ve got to put your head above the carpet, you’ve got to get yourself into trouble if you want to make change happen.
Darren: Obviously, a lot of people who make complaints about whether they’ve received poor customer service or a faulty product, they often go at it very angrily. You can get frustrated and you just sort of vent at what you feel to be an injustice. What’s your advice to somebody on making sure they get the resolution that they deserve?
Helen: I always say the top tip is to write. Always, always write, because then you’ve got your evidence trail. If you need to take it to an ombudsman, go to a small claims court or you’re being sent around the houses, you’ve got that evidence, and if you phone, you just don’t have that.
If you are going to phone because it’s urgent, make sure you take the names of people, time log it all and follow up with an email on what was agreed. If the company doesn’t want you emailing and so it doesn’t provide an email address like certain big companies do now, then just go to ceoemail.com and that will provide you with the CEO’s email address. Now, it’s very rare for the CEO to respond personally, although some do, but it does escalate it and it does get it into the system. You’ve got the better of them because you’ve managed to get it in writing, and you’ve got that evidence. So that’s it really, the top tip is to always do it in writing, and to keep it calm and objective.
Darren: So with companies making these sorts of customer service blunders, what do you think is the key mistake companies keep making?
Helen: When I ask consumers what frustrates them the most, it’s not being listened to, not being taken seriously and being sent around the houses. When they notify a company of something and it just doesn’t listen to them or take them as an individual, instead giving them a stock answer.
We can take a company saying it’s not going to get back to us for a week, but it should tell us it’s not going to get back to us for a week because it’s going to investigate, you know? People also want proper apologies. I think companies don’t realise that – I don’t know whether it’s arrogance, complacency, ignorance or combination of all three, but they don’t realize that if they treated the customers well, then those customers will go on and talk about them and say good things about them, they will review them.
It’s also about how companies deal with complains. They should see complaints as an opportunity to improve because it means now they can they can look at their systems and so there’s so much opportunity to have in dealing with complaints, but companies just don’t get it.
Darren: Yeah, when a company gets a complaint, it is an opportunity to improve and to turn somebody who is a potential detractor into a raving fan. How do you help businesses to improve their customer service so that they turn their customers and their clients into fans?
Helen: In lots of different ways! But I think the fundamental base is to get companies looking at their customers in a different way. It’s about looking at customers as individuals, with their own names and lives, and that some people are vulnerable. At some point in their life, nearly everybody will have a vulnerability, and whether it’s a disability, a bereavement or something else, and it’s about actually accommodating that. Companies should look at, when they get an aggressive email from somebody, is it aggressive or is it because they’re 80 years old and they don’t know how to use email very well? Is their email really difficult to understand because they’ve got a learning disability?
Instead of just going “oh, we can’t deal with this one” or “I’m going to give them the minimum required here”, they need to actually look at customers in a different way.
I think that’s quite fundamental, and when I’ve worked with big companies like Lloyds, it really is about a change in mindset. You also need to give permission to start giving that ownership to representatives to actually deal with the complaint, because then we get responses back from people who say thank you for choosing this individual, you didn’t give me what I wanted but I can see you investigated my complaint properly and adequately, and that you treated me seriously as an individual. You can’t get better than that, than somebody coming back and saying that you dealt with their complaint really well when they didn’t even get what they wanted, and that’s about changing mindset and about how you see customers and how you deal with them.
Darren: Is there any companies that spring to mind that have no interest in customer service during the customer experience? They’re great at the beginning, and then when the customer is about to leave, they then leap into action, but for the whole duration, they don’t tend to be that bothered? Usually, it’s sort of digital TV providers or telecoms that are the worst for that.
Helen: Absolutely, telecoms are the worst! To get anything from them, you have to threaten to leave, they are appalling. With Virgin, 20 years I’ve been with them, and even I struggle with them. I get a very decent pay-out at the end of it, but that’s because I know exactly what I’m doing.
It’s very much complacency with the telecoms. The evidence shows that people will pay more for good customer service, but they just don’t get it.
Darren: I think it’s only fair in contrast I ask what industries do you think are doing it particularly well, or have changed to do it particularly well?
Helen: I don’t think there is only one sector that does it well. Whenever I ask consumers, particularly on social media, what chain, store or trader do you think is doing really well, everyone will say “oh my, John Lewis is really great”, somebody else will come and say “well mine experience was really bad, I tried to take this back lah-dee-dah”.
I don’t think we can say someone’s particular sector is good. I think small businesses tend to care about their customers a little bit more because they’re building and so they want to retain that field of customers. They haven’t got that complacency and arrogance around them, but of course then smaller businesses when they set up quite often don’t have the fundamentals in place, and then when they get a complaint, they don’t know how to deal with it.
When you look at the chains, one store may do really well and one store may do poorly, so it quite often just comes down to the management I think as well.
Darren: That’s quite interesting because obviously a store like John Lewis, for example, or a chain store like ASDA or Tesco, they will have processes in place for dealing with complaints and dealing with returns, and you’re right – it’s down to how the actual store follows those processes because they’re probably not following them all to the letter. But the majority of the clients that we work with, for example, are small businesses, and you’re right – they don’t have those processes in place because they’re just not ready for that.
So, what can a small business do so that they are prepared? What sort of processes can they put in place so that they can retain customers and give customer service and deal with the complaints that they may eventually get?
Helen: They need to make sure that they’re legally compliant, that they’ve got their terms and conditions correct. No returns, for example, you can’t say that, it’s illegal. You’ve got to know your laws, really know about the Consumer Rights Act 2015. All those kinds of things that small businesses don’t get because they’re enjoying the marketing and they’re setting up and selling.
I think you do really well to put your returns policy out there. You know, this is how good we are, we really hope you’ll be delighted with your purchase, but if you aren’t and something goes wrong, this is what happens. If you as a consumer, you look on a website and you see two businesses offering the same product at same price, and this one says “if something goes wrong we will do X, Y and Z to put it right” and this one says nothing about it, which one are you going to have more faith in?
Nine times out of 10, there’s not going to be a problem, but if there is a problem, customers need to know you’re going to put it right. It’s about showing people how to complain, make it easy for them to contact you.
Darren: What is the biggest success that you have had? The biggest turnaround where you thought this this is a horrific situation, but you’ve managed to resolve it?
Helen: I often get asked what was my biggest result was. It’s not about the sum for me – I’ve complained about free gifts and I’ve complained about items for thousands of pounds for me, it’s just not about that. I still remember one story that’s written about in my book, so it must be over six years now with EasyJet. A family had gone on holiday and the husband’s mother was dying, and they’d got the notification to say that they needed to come back early before she dies, and EasyJet wouldn’t let them do it. They were charging them, but had she have died while they were out there, they would have paid for the family to come back, which I thought was pretty horrific. They were actually saying, you know, it’s going to cost you several hundred pounds to go and see your mother before she dies, which I just thought was morally wrong. I got involved in that and I got their flight and also had to work very quickly on that. As I said, it was years and years ago, but that one stayed with me because I just thought it was morally just awful, and so I got the money once the admin fee or something had been paid. It’s that kind of thing that that sticks with me, not the amount.
Darren: I’ve got to share the worst customer experience I’ve ever had. It was from Direct Line Insurance because I had my car insured with Direct Line years ago, and it was stolen. It broke down, ended up in a garage as it needed a new radiator, and somebody broke into the garage and used it as a getaway car. It was quite exciting for the car, I’m sure, but because it had no radiator, he only got as far as Bristol before the radiator and the engine blew.
As the police recovered it, Direct Line had already paid out, but they paid out my ex-wife on the car. It wasn’t her car, so they paid out somebody else on the car. The police recovered it, brought it back to me, and I thought “brilliant, I’ve got my car back, I can get it fixed”. Direct Line said no, as they’d paid out on that car, so they owned it. I said “well, you’ve not paid me and I’m the owner of the car”. This took 18 months – 18 months with Direct Line insisting they owned the car as they’d already paid out on it. I had to hide it in my dad’s garage because I couldn’t use it. Eventually, after numerous blogs on the internet – because they wouldn’t talk to me because she’d taken me off the policy, so I couldn’t even tell them the car had been recovered – they phoned me up and said “do you know this blog mrdaz.com? We believe your car’s been recovered”. I said it had, and they said “why didn’t you tell us?” Well, I tried, they put the phone down on me and wouldn’t speak to me!
So the whole debacle took 18 months, and eventually, they admitted they’d made a mistake and should have tried to find out who owned the car before they paid out on it. Yes, they probably should have, and they only paid me £100 compensation for 18 months of the car being stuck in the garage, and at the time, I was so exhausted with that 18-month battle to get my car sorted that I just accepted that. Every time I look back on that, I think there’s no way I should have accepted that.
Helen: I could’ve done it after eight weeks, haha! Sorry sunshine, you could have sorted that much quicker, but again, people don’t know. People don’t know that you could have gone to the financial ombudsman, you could have asked for a deadlock letter and done it before eight weeks or waited for the eight weeks, gone to the financial ombudsman and even with their backlog, it’s quite a simple one. They would have dealt with that within probably two or three months, not 18 months.
Darren: One aspect that got me was the smugness of when I phoned them up to tell them the car had been recovered, I gave the policy number and they immediately said “I’m sorry, we’ve been told we can’t speak to you, I have to terminate this call”. Then, later, they were angry I hadn’t told them –you would not speak to me, there was no way I could contact you!
Helen: Again, that’s when it comes down to writing – you’ve got your evidence, whether they respond to you or not. When you go to the financial ombudsman, it means you can say I wrote this letter, and I wrote this letter, and I didn’t get a response to any of them, which you don’t have when you use phone calls.
Darren: Unless you record the phone calls, which I do.
Helen: That’s a different case and I still wouldn’t advise doing that. If you go to court, it’s up to them whether they decide it’s admissible or not. You can certainly can record it for your own private use, so if you want to remember what you said, but actually as evidence, you may not be able to use it in court.
Darren: I’ve looked into that quite extensively – I think it’s the RIPA Act of 2000 on call recording. If you record your own calls, you are legally allowed to do so without telling the other party that you’re doing it, but you’re not allowed to use it. You can’t use it in court, you can’t even play it for somebody else, even your husband or wife.
Helen: When I tried to get some real clarity on this from the Minister of Justice and Ofcom and all that, it was still quite woolly. You may or may not be able to use it in court, and at the end of the day, you want your evidence.
Darren: So, in summary then Helen, if somebody wants your advice or to work with you, whether that’s to make a complaint on their behalf or to advise them, or a company wants you to come in and speak to them about how they can better their own customer service, what are the best ways they can get in touch with you and what can you do for them?
Helen: Well the business book is my website so thecomplainingcow.co.uk and that’s split into business and consumers, so consumers can find lots of free advice about how to complain effectively, your consumer rights and stories. The books are there, there’s some templates to buy and download. Consumers can get a hold me also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I’m on LinkedIn too. Companies can get in contact with me by emailing too.
Darren: Fantastic, thank you very much for doing this interview Helen, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.
I loved talking to somebody who’s complained more than I have, which is very, very rare! If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to The Engaging Marketeer podcast on iTunes or your preferred podcasting platform.
