I had an annoying incident at the video store this morning. We've all been there, so I won't bore you with the details.
I was ticked off having to start my week in a bad mood, however, so used the online contact point to send an e-mail with my complaint. That was less than four hours ago.
I just got this lovely e-mail response from the area manager responsible for this particular store, and didn't she do a good job with this? It put a smile back on my face.
AND, they probably saved me as a customer.
Ms. Abbott,
Please accept my sincere apologies for your experience this morning at our Sunnybrook location. Your email was forwarded to me, as I am the new Area Manager responsible for that location, effective today.
I want to assure you that your feedback has been taken very seriously, and I will be visiting the Store Manager this week to discuss the level of customer service in the Store, and ensure that there is a plan of action to improve it. We have already scheduled a meeting together and this will be the first item on our agenda.
I would be happy to offer you a couple of free New Release rentals on your Rogers Video account if you feel this would be something of value to you. I don't want to presume, but I would really like to do something to demonstrate our appreciation of your business. Please let me know how you would feel about this.
Thank you again for your timely feedback, and please know that it will be used to follow up with the staff who created a negative start to your week, and to ensure that all our customers at Sunnybrook feel valued in the future.
With sincere apologies,
Jane Doe
Area Manager - Area 5
Rogers Video
Speed of Response Essential
Service recovery best practices have been researched many times. One of the most important factors always turns out to be SPEED OF RESPONSE.
For a complex problem, maybe one that needs investigation, it is still very important to acknowledge the issue, even if there is no resolution yet.
Depending on the issue, frequent telephone calls to keep the customer informed are appropriate. Certainly, the customer should always be clear about when they can expect to hear something from you.
If there have actually been emotions running high, or hostile words exchanged, you will have an additional problem to fix. For some reason (haven't seen any research on this yet), even after a problem is fixed, complaining customers are often reluctant to return. The negative emotions are now wedded to the source. It's not rational, but it is often true.
If you see it once, it's a pattern
It's important to remember that very few people actually complain. (This has also been researched). A good rule of thumb is that it's less than 10% for consumers, and less than 25% for businesses. And sometimes much less than this.
I learned a bit of wisdom from a sales trainer once, that totally applies to this issue: "If you see it once, it's a pattern".
So every complaint that you hear about as a manager represents many that you didn't hear about.
I suspect the same thing holds true for compliments -- if you have staff that receive formal compliments, these are probably not isolated either. They are probably winning fans for the business every day. So do something nice for them.
And if you are hearing neither complaints nor compliments, then you have a challenge in fixing your cusotmer feedback mechanisms.
