In business, if you’re not prepared to admit where you’ve failed the customer, then you’re never going to recover from that failure. In my Coaching Tip this week I’ll show you how service success happens when we identify and deal with areas of service failure, and then work to achieve service recovery.
Here’s a really basic service philosophy. If a child orders an ice cream at Disneyland, and the ice cream falls to the ground as the child licks it, from Disneyland’s perspective that’s a service failure. What they do is recover by remaking the ice cream, giving it to the child, and teaching them how to lick the ice cream so it doesn’t fall to the ground.
What does selling ice cream at Disneyland have to do with selling houses? Well, it’s about areas in your business where you’ve failed at a service level, and what you can do to recover by fixing the issue and really backing the customer in.
Say you’ve made promises to a client and, for whatever reasons, you’ve not made good on those promises. Would you still charge for services you did not deliver? Would you admit failure and try to seek recovery? I’m telling you to have that conversation with the client. Admit to that service failure. Don’t make excuses. The idea is to go super hard in backing the customer in so they will bounce back and be reasonable.
You see, a customer you’ve failed is going to be talking to other people about why they shouldn’t use you. It’s the worst marketing you could ever do. But service recovery is about you doing what’s right and fixing the issue so that the customer can say you backed them in, and they’ll tell other people to use you because you’re great at what you do.
Look at the service success in your business today. Identify areas where you have service failure, and decide what you can do to achieve service recovery. Make sure you’ve got great checklists, great forms, great dialogues and great visuals. Learn from your mistakes and prevent those critical errors from ever happening again.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.