What if we included Seth Godin’s blog post entitled, ‘The complaining customer doesn’t want a refund‘ as a preamble to all customer service communications.  Can we really be compensated for time lost or aggravation experienced?  We are worth far more than a credit for a future flight or balance towards a future transaction.  What good does a voucher do if the hyperlink to a better experience remains broken?  What we really want is to be heard and know that enduring a less than ideal interaction made the next person’s experience better.  Change for those who follow us is worthy of conversation.  However, we have been taught (and encourage) a transactional relationship.  We accept $xxx and say we will forget the interaction ever happened.  Except we do not forget.  It becomes our story.  We continue to tell the story with impunity with no confidentiality agreement signed.  The cost to the service provider is actually much higher than the goodwill coupon.  The company paid us to win back our loyalty and we got to keep our story.  What if an organization really heard us and took measurable and transformational steps to improve based on our feedback?  The pot hole did not get an orange traffic cone but was actually repaved.  We would tell a completely different story if we were heard and that story would be remarkable.