Marketing & Management
6 Steps to Service Recovery
...by Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service
Service recovery includes all the actions people take to get a disappointed customer back to a state of satisfaction. There are six caring actions that combine to make service recovery systematic, memorable, and satisfying.
The point is not to determine who's to blame. It's to solve the problem. If customers have a problem, chances are they're not happy. The first step to problem solving is to acknowledge the fact that – at least in the customers' eyes—a problem exists. So start by having employees tell them, personally and sincerely, "I'm sorry."
This is not the time to instruct customers in the finer points of what they should have done to avoid the problem in the first place. Customers resent being lectured to. What they mostly want customers service reps people to do is just listen. Listening and empathizing helps customers unwind, get it out of their systems, and feel they're talking to someone who really cares about taking car of things.
After listening (so they know exactly what's at issue), employees people can work to resolve the problem. Usually, what customers want now is what they wanted originally—and the sooner the better.
A recovery system will earn high marks from customers if it includes, even symbolically, some form of atonement that, in a manner appropriate to the issue at hand, says, "I'd like to make it up to you." But atonement is more than simply the "it's on us" or "no charge" offer. The word symbolic is carefully chosen; it suggests that little acts of caring, when sincerely done, mean a lot to customers. Of course, the bigger the service breakdown—and the more valued the customer—the more impressive the atonement will have to be to restore aggrieved customers to a state of satisfaction.
Recovery time is double jeopardy "where the stakes are doubled and the scores can really change." Your system has already failed once. If employees make promises they can't keep in trying to get the business back in the customer's good graces it will be throwing gas on the fire. Employees need to know how to be realistic about what they can and can't deliver, and how quickly.
In a few days, or a few weeks, employees should check back to make sure things really did work out to the customer's satisfaction. That kind of thoroughness and demonstrated concern builds loyalty that can weather future storms—and helps set the organization apart from competitors.
Editorial adapted from Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service, Second Editions (AMACON; May 22, 2007; $17.95 Paperback) by Chip R Bell and Ron Zemk, with Dave Zielinski.
|
