Try a Triage Approach to Customer Complaints

Recently, I had the privilege of being a keynote speaker on customer experience at a company’s quarterly event. Following the speech, the CEO shared an insight into their approach to customer service and CX, comparing it to a medical emergency room. “Our response to handling customer complaints and issues is akin to triage,” he said. “We effectively diagnose the problems, yet find ourselves treating similar cases repeatedly as if sending them to an emergency room that never addresses the underlying causes.” 

Triage is an interesting word. It’s a medical term, but I wanted to better understand the definition, so I did what most people do. I Googled the word, and this is the definition from Merriam-Webster: 

The sorting and allocating of treatment to patients, especially battle and disaster victims, according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors. 


The assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or most likely to achieve success. 

The first definition confirmed that the CEO’s comment was accurate. They fix problems, but don’t seem to be preventing the problems. The second definition sounds like common practice for most businesses, not just hospital emergency rooms. They prioritize projects – in this case, customer service issues – and focus on what will provide the best return. 

I loved the CEO’s comment because he recognized the end goal wasn’t to deliver great customer service when there was a problem but to create a customer experience that had few, if any, problems. Put another way, it’s one thing to fix problems. It’s another to understand why there’s a problem and create a preventative solution or system that eliminates – or at least mitigates – the problem in the future. Yes, there will be customer service issues, but with this line of thinking, you can eliminate many problems and complaints. 

This reminded me of commercials I remember seeing when I was a kid. From 1967-1988, there were commercials for Maytag washers and dryers. Many of you are too young to remember the Maytag repairman known as “Ol’ Lonely,” who was lonely and bored because the Maytag equipment was so dependable. Of course, the machines weren’t perfect, but they were reputed to be more reliable than competitors. 

I like the idea of boring – when it comes to problems and complaints. Nothing would make me happier than to see the true depiction of a company’s customer service agents sitting around bored because customers seldom called with complaints.  

So, consider this question: Would you rather be the company known for solving problems when they happen or the company that doesn’t have problems?

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.