Responding to Complaints

This is a practical lesson in how to respond to complaints; if you want the theory behind this lesson, sign up for my course, Avoiding Complaints: Theory and Practice.

Since this is a practical lesson, we start with an actual situation:

I’ve just gotten 11 notices in WorkDay to approve invoices ranging from $1700 to $980,000. The invoices say they are for “tech” to support “department activities,” but I can’t tell who ordered the tech or what tech includes. Obviously I don’t want to approve well over a million dollars in invoices on someone else’s accounts. Could you help me with this?

Complainer

Now, your go-to first response to a complaint like this should always be Abusive Ad Hominem. For those of you who never took Latin as part of your administration training, that means “abuse the person” making the complaint.

Don’t you know what accounts you have in your Cost Center? You should be checking your accounts regularly.

Response, Stage I

Notice that the author of this abuse does not state that Matthew is an idiot for complaining, but subtly inserts the abuse by implication. Subtle insinuation is an advanced skill, which we will take up in higher-level workshops. For now, the important thing about Stage I is to put the complaint back on the complainer’s own failures, moral or otherwise.

In fact, I do know what accounts I supervise, and this is not one of them. That was my original point when I said I didn’t want to approve someone else’s invoices.

Persistent Complainer

If possible, you want to discourage further pursuit of a complaint by careful use of Abusive Ad Hominem. However, some complainers, as this example illustrates, may persist. In such cases, you need to assess whether further abuse will deter the complainer, or whether you need to move to Stage II. For the sake of this workshop, let’s assume that you’ve tried a few more insults without successfully deterring the complainer.

In that case, we move to Stage II.

This won’t hurt you in any way, because it won’t actually hit your account.

Response, Stage II

This is essentially the Circumstantial Ad Hominem: Point to anything in the complainer’s circumstances to suggest the complaint is vacuous and therefore a pointless waste of your time.

This particular response also demonstrates the work of an advanced complaint-avoider, because it does not say outright that the complaint should not have been made; rather, the implication is that, had the complainer been competent, they would have realized that there was nothing to complain about.

A useful variant of Stage II avoidance is something like the Tu Quoque strategem in reverse. An example will illustrate this move in practice:

You think that’s a problem? I’m dealing with a situation where the invoice isn’t even legal, let alone the wrong account. Count your blessings.

Response, Stage II.A

Like the Circumstantial Ad Hominem, the point of this move is to neutralize the complaint and render it pointless. In this case, the complaint-avoider makes sophisticated use of deflection combined with an appeal to pity: This response not only deflects attention from the complaint by pointing to another, more severe or urgent complaint, but also portrays this more severe problem as a burden that the long-suffering respondent must bear before attending to the current, patently trivial complaint.

Judicious use of Stage I and II responses will allow you to avoid responding to nearly all complaints, but in rare cases, a complainer is either sufficiently persistent or has sufficient facts on their side that Stage I and II responses fail. Here’s a practical example of a complainer with the facts on their side:

Even if it won’t hit my account, sooner or later isn’t ACC going to notice that someone spent $1.4 million on something vaguely labeled “tech”? And won’t they come looking for whoever approved the invoices?

Doggedly Persistent Complainer

In that case, we move to Stage III, which involves the time-honored strategy, Play for Time.

Ah, I see — yes, that is a problem. We need some time to look into this.

Response, Stage III

Again, this is admirable avoidance work. Let me point out a few details concerning the craftsmanship of this response.

First, note the masterly use of truth to throw the complainer off guard. The complaint-avoider deftly affirms that there is in fact a problem, thus rendering the complainer more susceptible to playing for time.

Second, note the shift to “we.” Never take personal responsibility for getting to the bottom of anything. Using “we” suggests not only amorphous group responsibility, but also conveys the reassuring image of a team of people ready to address complaints.

Note also that there is no mention of any concrete action to be taken. It’s crucial that you never tell a complainer what you’re going to do; state only that you are going to do something.

Finally, note the complete absence of any timeframe. Setting an expectation that you will close the loop with a complainer is a common novice complaint-avoider mistake. It’s understandable that, in trying to avoid a complaint while using some words to give the impression that you are going to do something, you might slip and make an offhand reference to a timestamp, like “I’ll get back to you in a week.” Experienced complaint-avoiders know that “in a week” is just filler, roughly equivalent to typing “blah blah blah.” However, unsophisticated or persistent complainers may take such filler words literally.

Understandable as it may be, then, any reference, even inadvertent, to a timeframe can set the expectation that an actual solution may be forthcoming, so references to timeframes should always be avoided when playing for time.

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I hope you take away some useful tips for avoiding complaints. To deepen your skills, take the full course, Avoiding Complaints: Theory and Practice, which is chock-full of additional strategies — and even role-play to help you perfect your complaint avoidance skills. If you’d like to expand your administrative skills even more, consider my companion courses, Avoiding Decisions as a Career Pathway and Appearing Competent in Three Easy Steps.

Thanks for joining — see you again soon!

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