In order to complain, you have to reveal a piece of your emotional self. People do not easily share feelings with others unless some relationship is established. Surprisingly, our culture does not place a high value on revealing feelings. Voting with the feet is the American way. Second, employees rarely encourage feedback.
Many employees have trouble hearing a complaint as feedback.
Instead they hear it as a personal attack on their self-esteem. They cannot differentiate between issues related to their job and who they are personally. To elicit feedback seems masochistic. The surest road to a customer focused culture is through increased complaints. So the focus of this strategy is the point of contact when a customer who has an issue he or she does not want to deal with meets an employee who does not want to hear it.