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“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Have you heard this leadership quote from Bill Gates?

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955 and is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist.  He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, specifically as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation.

Complaints are Little Nuggets of Gold

Bill Gates famously said that unhappy customers are the greatest source of learning, but it’s not just Bill Gates who believes this. Another of the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, famously had customer complaint emails come to an inbox he could see himself in the early days of Amazon, so he could see where customers were unhappy.

Complaints Reveal Weak Points in Your Process

The power behind unhappy customers is it shows us where our process is falling down and not meeting expectations. When our product or our service is meeting or exceeding our customers’ expectations, that’s when they start doing the work of selling our product for us. They talk about it at barbecues, they recommend it to their friends.

Likewise however it’s a great thing to talk about when they have a chance to complain and warn their friends and family against buying something when it has not been a good experience.

If everything is a process – whether we have articulated that process properly or not – then any complaints allow us to fix those weak points, build a better way of doing things and ensure it is done that way every time.

Bill Gates had it a little bit easy – he was dealing with software where he could update it and make fixes when it was necessary. Of course his main products, Microsoft  Windows, and then Microsoft Office, weren’t perfect at first. They garnered a lot of criticism. But the company improved it over time, and ensured it was the best thing to use for its customers, and subsequently Bill Gates (and Jeff Bezos) have become very, very rich.

– David McLachlan

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