How to Recover from a Bad Customer
Service Experience
Customer Service Recovery
Use Service Recovery to Keep Them
“If you want to increase sales, grow a loyal customer
base that is the envy of your competitors, and provide service that is
worth thousands of dollars in advertising and marketing, you must make a
commitment to solving your customer’s problems—and to doing so quickly.”
So says John Tschohl, founder and president of the Service Quality
Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which develops and delivers
customer service training programs throughout the world, and author of
several books on customer service, including Loyal For Life. “Every
company, no matter how excellent its products or employees,
occasionally makes a mistake,” he says. “How those companies and their
employees respond to their mistakes, however, is what separates
successful, customer-service driven organizations from the rest of the
pack. Service recovery is the key.”
Tschohl defines service recovery as solving a customer’s problem and
sending that customer out the door feeling as if he’s just done business
with the greatest company on earth. Unfortunately, he says, most
companies handcuff their employees with inflexible policies and
procedures that discourage them from making empowered decisions to solve
a customer’s problem.
“Empowerment is the backbone of service recovery,” Tschohl says.
“Employees must be allowed to solve a customer’s problem on the spot.”
Research, he adds, shows that a customer who has experienced a problem
with a company and had that problem solved are more loyal that a
customer who never had a problem.
“Research also shows that there is nothing as powerful—or inexpensive—as
word-of-mouth advertising,” Tschohl says. “Happy customers will tell
everyone they know about how well your company treated them, which will
drive your business. You must care for them, nurture them, and do
whatever it takes to earn their undying loyalty.
Advertising will bring a customer through your doors
once, but the challenge is to keep them coming back to you.” Tschohl
recommends taking these four steps to provide service recovery that will
grow your business:
1. Take responsibility. “Admit that the company made a mistake and tell
the customer you’re sorry for the problem,” Tschohl says. “Admit that
the company made a mistake. It’s human nature to want to blame someone
else for a mistake. But the customer doesn’t care who made the mistake;
she just wants the employee standing in front of her to correct it. That
employee must own the problem, apologize on behalf of the company, and
then take the necessary steps to solve it.”
2. Act quickly. “Service recovery should happen in 60 seconds or less,”
Tschohl says. “Great service recovery is not moved up the ladder or
passed to a supervisor to be handled another day. The cost of a delay is
dramatic, because most customers won’t wait; they will simply leave you.
The longer it takes for a complaint to be resolved, the angrier the
customer will get and the more likely he will be to take his
business—and his money—elsewhere.”
3. Be empowered. “If you don’t have empowered employees,
you will never have service recovery,” Tschohl says. “And, if you don’t
have service recovery, you won’t have loyal customers. The magic of
service recovery
occurs when it happens with a frontline employee. Identify and eliminate
policies and procedures that tie your employees’ hands and then reward
employees who make empowered decisions that satisfy—and retain—your
customers.”
4. Compensate. “Service recovery doesn’t end when you solve a customer’s
problem,” Tschohl says. “You must give him something of value, something
that lets him know you value his business and that will keep him coming
back to you. Every organization has something it can give a customer who
has experienced a problem. It doesn’t have to cost the company a lot but
it does have to have value in the eyes of the customer. Identify 10
products or services you can give to a customer who has experienced a
problem with your company. For example, a restaurant can give a customer
a free dessert, an airline can upgrade a passenger to first class, a
cell phone company can give a disgruntled customer 1,000 minutes.”
The purpose of service recovery is to prevent customer defections. “If
you solve your customers’ problems and resolve their complaints, they
will stay with you,” Tschohl says. “In each customer complaint is an
opportunity to win that customer’s long-term loyalty. In the process,
you will prevent customer defections, create word-of-mouth
advertising, and dramatically increase your sales and profits.”
John Tschohl is an international service strategist and
speaker and founder and president of the Service Quality Institute in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. Described by Time and Entrepreneur magazines as
a customer service guru, he has written several books on customer
service, including Loyal for Life, e-Service, Achieving Excellence
Through Customer Service, The Customer is Boss, and Ca$hing In: Make
More Money, Get a Promotion, Love Your Job. The service Quality
Institute has developed more than 26 customer service training programs
that have been distributed and presented throughout the world. John’s
bimonthly strategic newsletter is available online at no charge.
Visit
our customer service training programs and customer service videos.
