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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
When customers complain, companies tend to focus on the complaint.<\/p>\n
They respond to the bad review. They apologize on social media. They ask customer service to smooth things over. If the problem shows up often enough, someone eventually asks what marketing can do to improve the company\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s often the wrong question. The better question is whether customers are pointing to a real problem. If they are, the most useful thing marketing can do may be to help the company see it.<\/p>\n
PwC\u2019s 2025 Customer Experience Survey<\/a> found that 52% of consumers had stopped using or buying from a brand because of a bad experience with its products or services.<\/p>\n Better messaging can only take you so far.<\/p>\n Inside a company, everything has an owner. A late delivery is an operations issue. A software bug belongs to product. An unanswered call might be customer service.<\/p>\n Customers don\u2019t make those distinctions. They experience the company as a whole.<\/p>\n A hotel can promote exceptional service, but guests will remember waiting 20 minutes at an empty front desk. Once customers share experiences like that, they become part of your brand story.<\/p>\n That\u2019s especially important as AI becomes part of how people research companies. An Idea Grove survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers<\/a> found that only 2% would buy from an unfamiliar brand based on an AI recommendation without additional research. Reviews were the top trust signal respondents evaluated.<\/p>\n AI may change how customers discover you. It doesn\u2019t prevent them from checking whether your claims hold up.<\/p>\n When the same complaint keeps appearing, marketers should ask: Are we failing to deliver the promise, or are we making the wrong promise?<\/em><\/p>\n Those aren\u2019t the same problem.<\/p>\n If a hotel promises a fast, frictionless check-in and routinely leaves guests standing at the front desk, that\u2019s an execution problem.<\/p>\n But imagine a company that markets itself around white-glove service while its business model is deliberately low-cost and self-service. Customers complaining about limited support may not be exposing an operational failure. Marketing may have created an expectation the company was never designed to meet.<\/p>\n In that case, the answer isn\u2019t to fix operations. It\u2019s to fix the promise.<\/p>\n Marketers naturally look at complaints through the lens of perception. But sometimes the market doesn\u2019t misunderstand the company. The company has misrepresented itself to the market.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another uncomfortable possibility: Sometimes doing our jobs well can make a company\u2019s reputation worse.<\/p>\n Suppose customers are already complaining about a recurring product or service problem. Marketing launches a successful campaign, demand increases and thousands of new customers encounter the same problem.<\/p>\n Now the company has more disappointed customers, more negative reviews and more evidence contradicting its own claims.<\/p>\n Marketing didn\u2019t cause the problem. But it amplified it.<\/p>\n Before pouring more customers into the top of the funnel, marketers should understand what\u2019s happening at the other end.<\/p>\n Companies shouldn\u2019t wait for customers to tell them directly. Qualtrics XM Institute\u2019s 2026 consumer research<\/a> found that only about three in 10 consumers now explain directly why they\u2019re leaving.<\/p>\n That makes reviews, social posts, support conversations and sales calls valuable sources of intelligence. The point isn\u2019t to react to every angry customer. It\u2019s to look for patterns.<\/p>\nCustomers don\u2019t separate the brand from the experience<\/h2>\n
Complaints can expose two different problems<\/h2>\n
Good marketing can make a bad problem worse<\/h2>\n
Complaints tell you what customers actually experience<\/h2>\n