Which of the following is the best method of recovering customer goodwill?
Failures in customer service are inevitable. Whether you’re just starting out as a business or a well-oiled machine, you’re bound to slip up and disappoint a customer at some point; your reservations desk forgets to accommodate a special request, your airline has to cancel a flight to a popular holiday destination, or a waiter in your restaurant is having a bad day and is impatient with an elderly couple. We are a part of an industry which is high touch and driven by human interaction, 100% error free service is almost impossible, which is why how an organization recovers from those service breakdowns is what sets them apart from the rest. Show
It happens. The good news is that this is where you have the opportunity to make a real difference. Left unresolved, service failures produce disgruntled customers – who will be quick to tell their friends, family and just about anyone who will listen about their poor service experience. In fact, research shows that on average, a dissatisfied customer will share their negative experience with 16 people. A helpscout report quoting newvoicemedia.com says that feeling unappreciated is the #1 reason customers switch away from products and services. That will not bode well for your business. Handled tactfully, however, breakdowns can be resolved, and even turned into opportunities to enhance customer loyalty and improve overall customer satisfaction. In fact, the Service Recovery Paradox states that a customer thinks more highly of a company after the company has corrected a problem with their service, compared to how he or she would regard the company if non-faulty service had been provided. The thought is that the successful recovery of a faulty service leads to increased assurance and confidence among customers. The key lies in mastering service recovery. With the right skills, and a little training, companies can not only recover from their service failures and win back customers – but learn from their mistakes and come out stronger on the other end. Defining Service RecoveryIt is essentially the action a service provider takes in response to service failure. A thought out, planned process of returning an aggrieved customer to a state of satisfaction with a company/service.” How to build a successful customer service recovery program?Here are some key pointers: 1. Anticipate & Understand the needs of the customerMost problems result from a misalignment between customer expectations and the products or services actually provided. Do some research to deeply understand your customers and what services they expect along the experience pathway, so you can anticipate their demands before you make a mistake. Be realistic about what you’re offering and don’t oversell yourself; it will only set you up for failure if (or rather when) you can’t deliver on your promise. Use the SERVQUAL Instrument – an empiric model designed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry to compare service quality performance with customer service quality needs. It essentially measures an organization's service quality performance against the needs of its customers on five broad parameters – Responsiveness, Reliability, Empathy, Assurance and Tangibles. This model allows you to find and plug the gaps between actual and perceived service. Examine the customer experience pathway and identify what was/ were the point/s of failure along the pathway. Once you are able to understand where along the customer experience pathway the failure actually took place, not only are you better positioned to solve the problem for the customer, but you can also keep track, record these incidents and train your team to avoid service breakdowns in similar situations. SERVICE EXCELLENCE TOOLKIT |