Customer complaints: does a discount repair the relationship?
In high-value-added selling, a complaint tests more than whether a delivery meets specifications: it reveals how the supplier takes responsibility for its commitments. The management question is specific: should a discount be authorised to close the case, or should the team first establish what would make its handling acceptable to the customer?
What the literature establishes
Stephen S. Tax, Stephen W. Brown and Murali Chandrashekaran (1998, Journal of Marketing) show that customers evaluate complaint handling along several dimensions of justice: the outcome, the procedure and interpersonal treatment. Their study links satisfaction with complaint handling to trust and commitment in the relationship. The amount awarded therefore does not capture the entire recovery experience.
What compensation cannot replace
Jeffrey G. Blodgett, Donna J. Hill and Stephen S. Tax (1997, Journal of Retailing) experimentally examine how these dimensions of justice affect behavioural intentions following a complaint. Their findings highlight, in particular, the importance of interpersonal treatment for repatronage intentions and negative word of mouth. Compensation therefore cannot be assessed independently of how it is offered.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a respectful explanation can save the cost of a discount; these studies do not justify that general substitution. An actual loss may require material redress, while courteous treatment does not make an inadequate outcome acceptable. The management task is to distinguish what needs to be compensated, corrected and explained, rather than to choose between money and relationship quality. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits of the evidence and of closed cases
These studies do not directly measure the profitability of a complaint-handling policy for industrial contracts in Fribourg. A survey of complaint experiences and an experiment examining intentions are insufficient to establish effects on actual B2B repeat purchases. In practice, a case marked as “resolved” often indicates the end of administrative processing without proving that the customer considers the response satisfactory.
A practical check in Fribourg
As part of SHR's “Vente à forte valeur ajoutée” programme, an exercise applicable in Fribourg would be to review, over one month, every complaint closed by a team serving the agri-food sector, bilingual industry or the university hub. For each case, record any compensation, the operational correction and the customer's explicit confirmation that the response is satisfactory, obtained in their working language. The main measure would be the proportion of closed cases containing this confirmation, distinguishing those with and without a discount and retaining non-responses in the denominator. This monitoring would not demonstrate the causal effect of a discount, but would make the gap between administrative closure and customer-acknowledged resolution verifiable. To go further: explore the High-Value Selling training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: High-Value Selling in Fribourg
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