Complaints Outlook 2019 – Winning new customers through advocacy

Posted: 18th October 2019

On the 12th September, we invited industry-leading complaints and customer experience experts, as well as other contributors to the Complaints Outlook 2019, to the report's launch event in London.

Attendees listened to a series of keynote speeches and enlightening panel sessions in which our speakers broke down the core findings of the Complaints Outlook and added their own valuable insight. We’re sure all those in the audience walked away with an even deeper understanding of current and future complaints trends and will be using this knowledge to improve the experiences of their customers.

If you couldn’t make the event, however, don’t worry. We were able to record the speeches and have compiled these here to give you an overview of the key takeaways from the day.

Zein Al-Bader, our very own Director of Commercial Solutions, took to the stage later in the afternoon to discuss the incredible importance of customer advocacy.

Now, any business will know that word-of-mouth recommendations are one of the best ways to boost sales and customer loyalty. But how can they use complaints to encourage customers to go out of their way to share their experience?

"An awful lot of money is spent by organisations on advertising and marketing," Zein says, "and the return on investment on that is usually lower than a focus on brand advocacy. I think the big reason for that is that people today are bombarded by brand advertising. A lot of people have become cynical about that. People are now making [purchasing] decisions more often based on peer-to-peer recommendations."