Tackling Complains With Grace

I am writing this post because I recently received a complain for sounding too ‘robotic’ in my email messages when I was requesting for a link exchange. The person was literally furious for several good reasons. Firstly, I did not address him personally, although his name was on his website. Secondly, his website was far bigger than mine and I did not seem too sincere in my email. Thirdly, I sent him follow-up emails that made the first mistake of not addressing him by name as well.

I was quite devastated to receive a complain email, the first I have ever received since I first requested for link exchanges 7 years ago. It may be due to the fact that the internet marketing landscape has changed since I left it few years ago and using my old system may have different implications. Nevertheless, I felt that the first thing I have to do is to reply to the angry webmaster with grace and seek his forgiveness. After all, I did make a person upset and should do everything in my power to rectify it.

I crafted a polite email and apologized. At the same time, I also thanked him for taking the effort to notify me, since he could have just ignored me totally and I would still be in the dark about how unpersonalized my email may have sounded. Lastly, I assured him that because of his email, I would make changes to my system, so that others need not go through the unpersonalized experience that he did.

His response was totally unexpected. Instead of sounding extremely angry like in is first email, he was friendly and immediately offered to put my link on his site. I believed that there are a few reasons why he responded this way. Firstly, I admitted my mistake and apologized. Secondly, I thanked him for his input and also really took his comment into serious consideration.

Upon seeing his email, I did not just accept his link exchange. I gave him priority placement without requesting him to put my link at any specific spot, because I wanted to thank him for helping me find my mistakes. His response to this email is even more amazing, putting my link on his homepage and sending over 500 visitors in the first day. I totally did not expect that to happen.

A few days later, I worked through my system to implement new features so that I would not fall into the same situation again. After implementing it, I notified him again of the changes just to assure him that I did not throw his comments away, but really took note of them. Of course, he had already given me good traffic by this time and I could have just ignored him, but I really wanted the webmaster to know that I appreciate him and his feedback. I believed that really helped our relations and build a potential for a long-partnership.

My point of this post is to demonstrate with a real case that tackling complains for any kind of business may bring upon unexpected benefits. Rectifying it helped me to now have a better system and I even got an unexpected traffic boost for a few days. The next time you receive a complain or flame letter, you may want to react graciously, instead of succumbing to auto-pilot counter flaming responses.

The people who bothered to leave a complain may be your best customers or partners in future.