Service Recovery - What to say when things go wrong
You blew it and you knew it. Your customer is understandably upset. Thankfully, they are communicating the problem to you (although you don’t seem very thankful at the time), knowing that it’s better they bring an issue to your attention then to go away, never use your product or service again. Plus, the worse case scenario could be they tell all of their friends about it and you now have ‘negative word of mouth’ advertising.
How do you handle an angry customer? What do you say to them, on the spot, to defuse their anger and perhaps be a hero in the end? Follow this script:
#1. Apologize
I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised by how many front-line employees who are willing to sell out management or a co-worker thinking ‘hey, I didn’t do it!’. But, if you work for the company that in some way let down a customer, you need to own up to it. “On behalf of (insert the name of your company here) I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience”.
#1. Empathize with the customer
Make the customer know that what they are feeling is understandable. “I know that if (fill in the mistake here) happened to me, I would be (insert customers emotion here). Basically here, you are saying, man if that happened to me, I sure would be upset too. In fact, you could really score some points by going a little bit further. “If that happened to me, I would be really upset. I’d be even more upset than you are right now! So I appreciate how calm you actually are under these circumstances.” This will only work if you are sincere. You don’t want to sound patronizing to a customer.
#3. Thank them for bringing the issue to your attention
We all know that it’s harder to bring in a new customer than to keep an existing one. So you should do whatever it takes to keep an existing customer happy so that they come back again and again. What you don’t want is for people to be unhappy with your company and silently go off never to be heard from again. Thank them for bringing it to your attention and let them know how you appreciate the opportunity to make it up to them.
#4. Ask them how you can make it up to them
Many people are scared to ask a customer, especially an angry customer, what can they do to make it up to them. However, if you ask a customer what they want, many times they will ask for less than what you were willing to give them. For example, I was at a nice hotel before a speaking engagement and the windows had a popping sound that was quite disturbing. I called downstairs to ask what the problem was, and had anyone ever complained about this weird noise before. The operator said they never had any complaints, but she would send an engineer up right away.
The engineer came up and told me that the noise was due to the sun beating down on windows that don’t fit the frames of the windows. The management at the hotel would have to spend too much money to replace the windows, so he comes up an average of 2 times a day telling customers that the sounds would stop as soon as the sun went down. What a difference from the operators’ account of the situation. I appreciated the explanation, but the sound never stopped. I called 2 more times to talk to the manager on duty, and no one returned my call. The next morning, I met the meeting planner and I told her of my situation. She told me to go and tell the front desk and ask for half of my room charge back.
I approached the front desk, prepared to tell the manager what my complaint was and when he or she would ask me what I would like to make up for a poor night’s sleep, I was prepared to say ‘half my room charge would be fine’. Much to my surprise, when I told the manager about the situation, she went right for the quick fix. She said “you shouldn’t have to pay for your room. Let me waive the whole charge for last night.” I was happy, but I realized, she could have simply asked for what I wanted and saved half the money she gave back to me.
When you our your company messes up with a customer, and then you fix it, you could actually be a hero to your customer. Customers who have a problem that is immediately fixed gives them a better impression than if nothing went wrong at all. People are more likely to talk about the service recovery and how great you were. If everything went status quo, then why would they talk about it? This doesn’t mean that you should purposefully plan something to go wrong so you can fix it. There will be plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong! And when they do, try this four step approach to service recovery and watch your customers come back again and again!
See you in the front-row!
Marilyn Sherman
www.MarilynSherman.com Helping people get a front-row seat in life!