By Bill Perry

My “Service 101” question of the day: “What is service recovery?”

I find that a lot of business owners, when asked this question, shrug their shoulders. That’s a shame, because a strong service recovery program is one of the best tools to keep loyal customers from defecting to your competitors.

Service recovery is simply those actions your business takes when things go wrong and your customer is dissatisfied—like when only one chef shows up to cook for a full restaurant and meal serving times are hitting 30 minutes, or your mechanic repairs a car but the customer calls the next day and says it’s still not working properly. What do you do about these service breakdowns?

Studies show that customers are more loyal to a business following strong recovery from a service breakdown than they might be if things go smoothly all the time.

I’m not saying go create problems for your customers to increase loyalty, but seize upon the opportunity when it does happen—and it will. Service breakdowns are a fact of life as long as we are dealing with people, equipment, technology and Murphy’s Law (you know, “whatever can go wrong eventually will”).

A woman at a recent seminar related a story of having a carpet cleaner come to her house. The customer had a dog, a cat and several children. While cleaning the living room carpet, the young man told the woman, “Your carpets wouldn’t be so dirty if you didn’t have pets.” A few minutes later, while working in the hallway and seeing pictures of the young kids on the wall, he added, “You wouldn’t need me as often if you didn’t have children.”

The astonished customer refused to pay until she called the manager, who promptly came to the house, made the young man apologize and redo all the carpets. The service was free and he gave her a coupon for the next cleaning free. A week later, the manager called to say he had fired the cleaner and hoped he could keep her business. Now that is strong service recovery.

This story also illustrates the steps in an effective service recovery program:

– Apologize sincerely. This is a time when “sorry” doesn’t cut it. Tone of voice and body language are as important as the words. Apologize to the customer in the same manner as you would want to receive the apology had you been wronged.

– Fix the problem quickly. Don’t let customers’ unhappiness linger or you will lose them. The manager in the story above dropped what he was doing and rushed over immediately to fix the problem.

– Involve the customer. When appropriate, ask the customer what the most useful solution for them would be. Many times you will find that a customer wants a lot less than you were prepared to offer as recovery for the breakdown.

– Do something extra. Just as the manager not only “comped” the current cleaning but gave the customer a coupon for her next one free also, you should do something extra as compensation. It costs some money, but nothing compared to the cost of losing that customer.

– Follow-up. Call back a few days later and make sure the customer’s problem was solved and that they are happy with you again.

– Learn from your mistakes. Every service breakdown presents an opportunity to improve. Your goal should not be to completely eliminate mistakes, but to prevent the same mistake from being made twice.

Service recovery is important. Make sure you have a plan.

Bill Perry is president of the Charleston Center for High Performance Organizations. He co-authored the book “Exceptional Customer Service” with Lisa Ford and David McNair, and gives seminars and speeches on customer focus. To send stories or request information about Bill’s seminars, e-mail him at billperry829@aol.com.

SUBSCRIBE | REPRINTS | CONTACT US

Phone: 843-849-3100    Fax: 843-849-3122