Service recovery is a big issue for many businesses. Service mishaps happen all the time, but how often do they happen in your business? Are you keeping track? When it does happen, you can’t mess around. Your employees need to be empowered to recover as quickly as possible, show the customer you care and make it right. When you recover quickly with concern, it will most definitely get the attention of your customers. They will understand you care and appreciate that you can deliver on what you promise and enhance their loyalty to your brand.
Here are five simple tips to implement that will enable your employees to recover from a service mishap quickly:
1. Challenge your staff to take charge and handle the mishap in a way that is consistent with your Brand Promise. Do you have a Brand Promise? If not define it. Check out http://www.brandascension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html to define your brand and develop your Brand Promise. You’ve got to do more than just recover, but recover in a way that is totally ‘on-brand’ with the promise you commit to your customers.
2. Ask your staff to walk in the customer’s shoes. Have them play out the scenario in their head with the customer’s viewpoint in mind to fully take in the situation and determine how best to resolve and recover in ways that represent what your brand stands for.
3. Make sure your staff understands your brand values. These are the guiding principles that form the basis for how you behave as a brand and what you believe is important in delivering to your customers. If you value compassion, then ask your staff to consider how compassion must show up in the process of service recovery.
4. Communicate your style as brand to your employees. How can they recover so they show up consistent with your unique personality as a brand? For instance, if your brand personality is all about humor such as Southwest Airlines, then a start is to admit the mistake and keep that sense of humor combined with humility when resolving the issue.
5. Empower your employees to identify ways to avoid the problem after they have resolved this service mishap. What are the alternatives available—process changes, etc. to avoid the mishap in the future? Give them every opportunity continuously provide input on enhancements that will improve service recovery quickly.
Take the time to implement these key tips in your business. You’ll be surprised at the difference they can make in how quickly you recover from a service mishap so you can continue to retain and build customer loyalty.
By Carol Chapman
Small Business Branding Secrets 