Service Recovery
Wednesday 6th May 2009
In my previous article I touched briefly on the fact that it's human nature to tell the world if you've received bad service from someone, yet to only tell a few if you've received exemplary service. It's not uncommon for entire websites and newsgroups to be setup for people to complain if something has gone wrong (though I'll state for the record this normally happens with larger corporates, in the UK some of the major mobile, telco, and broadband companies have ended up in this situation.)
Every business should strive to provide near-perfect customer service, but there are times when this just cannot be achieved. In these situations, it's best to try and identify any issues early, as problems left unattended or hidden away always seem to surface at the point when they are beyond hope. Try to encourage staff (where appropriate) to come forward with anything they think may be a problem as soon as they identify it, and if you wish to empower them, ask them that when they do come to you with a problem, that they have a suggestion as to the resolution of it too.
The art of stopping a problem becoming a bad transaction is called Service Recovery, and you will find that turning around a transaction that doesn't look favourable, and doing it with style will often catapult you from the situation where unpleasant side of a word-of-mouth referral can actually be turned around, and you're likely to build an excellent relationship with the customer concerned. There's a well-documented case in the UK where the founders (yes, the Chief Executives!) of the global Harry Ramsden's chip shop would phone every single customer that had left a less than content Feedback Card in the restaurant to apologise and to find out what they could do to improve their service. Most customers couldn't believe that the Chief Execs actually called them personally!
I hope this series of articles has given you a little to think about in the way you communicate with your customers, remember that without them there is no such thing as a business.
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Article written by, Oliver Stockman, Head of Marketing for ionix Limited.
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