The ultimate guide to service recovery

My first customer service interaction didn't end well.

I was sixteen and had been on the job for 15 minutes. An irritated customer approached and I said the wrong thing. He stormed out of the store.

It was a terrible feeling to see a customer literally walk out the door. In that moment, I vowed to learn everything I could to prevent that from happening again.

I've been obsessed with service recovery ever since. This guide summarizes what I've learned about getting customers to give you a second chance after a service failure.

What is service recovery?

Service recovery is the action taken to regain the trust of a dissatisfied customer.

It's typically necessary after a service failure, which is a catch-all term for something the customer believes went wrong, whether it's a defective product or service, a restrictive policy, or a rude employee.

Service recovery requires more than just soothing an upset customer's anger. (Check out my comprehensive guide for doing that.)

The key to service recovery is restoring trust.

Why is service recovery important?

Regaining a customer's trust after a service failure has a direct impact on customer retention, customer acquisition, and efficiency.

Customer retention

For every customer your business loses, you need to attract two new customers to grow. A 2011 study by Venessa Funches revealed that 42 percent of customers stopped doing business with a company after a service failure, while an additional 35 percent reduced the amount of business they did. Service recovery can help prevent those losses.

Customer acquisition

Service recovery prevents negative word-of-mouth. Funches's study found that 70 percent of customers spread negative news about a company after experiencing a service failure. This included:

  • Online reviews

  • Social media posts

  • Sharing stories with friends

Efficiency

Service recovery can help us serve customers more efficiently. Upset customers contact us more, return products more often, and ask for more discounts, freebies, and upgrades. Their issues also take up more time, which creates the need for additional staffing and can cause otherwise happy customers to have to wait for service.

When do we need service recovery?

An attempt at service recovery should occur whenever a customer experiences a service failure. The most obvious opportunity is when a customer contacts your company to get help resolving a problem.

Yet customers don’t always proactively tell you about their problems or frustrations. This makes service recovery more difficult since you can't work to regain a customers' trust unless you find out it's been broken.

Here are just a few ways to identify unreported service failures:

  • Ask customers directly. For example, "How is everything?"

  • Survey customers.

  • Read (and analyze) online reviews.

  • Proactively monitor your operations for service failures. For example, a late delivery.

  • Follow-up with customers who cancel or don't renew.

As the membership director for a professional organization, I helped increase membership by 67 percent by contacting former members and listening to the reasons they didn't renew.

Their eye-opening feedback helped our association learn about some big issues that never showed up in our member surveys. Many members ultimately renewed once we demonstrated that we were willing to listen and fix the problems they had experienced.

How can you recover from service failures?

There are three general steps involved in regaining a customer's trust after you identify a service failure:

  1. Contact customers

  2. Investigate issues

  3. Demonstrate accountability

Let's take a closer look at each one.

Step 1: Customer contact

Start by listening to your customer. This is easier to do if they proactively complain about a service failure, but it might require proactive follow-up if you learn about the issue later.

Try to understand the service failure from the customer's perspective. There's often a gap between what we think the problem is and what the customer perceives.

For example, a customer service rep for a propane company thought a customer was worried about getting their delivery rescheduled after a recent delivery was missed. What the customer really worried about was running out of propane and not being able to heat their home in the winter.

Effective listening is sometimes all that's needed to win back a customer's business.

A staffing agency executive decided to call clients who had recently stopped doing business with his company. His proactive outreach recovered business worth over $75,000 in net profit in just a few weeks by showing former clients that he valued them.

Step 2: Investigate the issue

It's important to investigate the root cause of service failures once a customer shares their feedback. This not only demonstrates your commitment to making things right, it helps you find a solution and prevent the same service failure from happening again.

One manager discovered a problem with his company's billing software after the same client complained about a billing error multiple times. The client would have forgiven one error, but he was losing trust in the business because the same error kept happening.

The manager was shocked to find that other clients had experienced the same issue, but either didn’t notice or didn't think it was worth complaining about. Even worse, the error was costing the company $50,000 per year.

It took just a few moments to fix the issue, save the company money, and prevent other customers from experiencing the same problem. Best of all, the unhappy client was willing to give the company another chance once he learned that the manager had listened to his feedback and investigated the problem.

Step 3: Demonstrate accountability

Customers are more likely to give you and your business another chance if you demonstrate accountability for the issue and prove you are working to prevent the problem from happening again.

The fix is sometimes simple.

Most baristas will gladly remake your latte if you don't think it tastes right. That instantly regains your trust so long as it doesn't take too long to remake your drink and the issue doesn't happen too often.

Other situations might require more expense and effort.

A mechanic once scratched my car door while it was in for service. While I wasn’t happy about the scratch, the service advisor immediately took responsibility. He offered to fix the scratch plus another scratch on the same door that the dealer didn’t cause. It would take a couple of days to make the repair, so he offered me a loaner car to use in the meantime.

This was a costly repair for the mechanic, but the accountability and extra effort demonstrated by the service advisor earned my repeat business.

Do you always need to give a freebie or discount?

Some people mistakenly believe that service recovery always includes giving customers a freebie or a discount. A few even worry about unscrupulous customers inventing problems just to get something for free.

Freebies and discounts should be used cautiously. They aren't always needed for service recovery, and sometimes they can make issues worse.

A better approach is to focus on regaining your customer’s trust.

Conclusion

Service failures can and will happen. That makes service recovery a valuable business function. Regaining a customer's trust after something goes wrong is essential to earning their repeat business, enjoying positive word-of-mouth, and reducing your servicing costs.

Three ways to immediately improve your customer experience

Today's customers are increasingly unhappy.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has steadily declined for the past four years. By the end of 2021, it had reached its lowest point since 2005.

What's causing the decline?

A survey conducted by Toister Performance Solutions in April 2022 aimed to find out. Over 1,500 consumers across the United States were asked about their experiences with companies.

The results point to three ways that companies can immediately improve their customer experience.

#1 Listen to your customers

In an era of endless surveys, customer listening is severely lacking.

The survey found that 30 percent of Americans feel companies rarely understand their needs. Another 44 percent thought companies understand their needs just some of the time.

Think about the impact when a company hasn't listened to your needs as a customer:

  • Your favorite feature was removed from a product you loved.

  • A salesperson pushes a sale without listening to what you want.

  • You have to repeat your story three times when calling customer service.

Companies and employees who don’t listen can’t understand their customers. That creates unmet expectations, frustration, and an incentive for customers to try out the competition.

It seems dead simple, but customer listening is underrated. Here are some resources that can help you improve:


#2: Keep your promises

Companies promise the moon, but in the end you feel like you got mooned.

Service failures are rampant.

The survey found that 21 percent of Americans have been disappointed by a product or service that they purchased in the past week. This includes defective products, faulty services, and unmet expectations.

This often comes from an accountability gap between marketing, sales, and operations. Examples are everywhere:

  • False or misleading advertising

  • Salespeople who lie or exaggerate to get a sale

  • Defective products

  • Services that fall short of expectations

  • Employees who don't call you back

You can avoid these disappointments by keeping the promises you make to your customers. Here are some resources to help you:

#3: Recover from service failures

Problems are inevitable, but many companies fail to recover.

The survey discovered that 14 percent of Americans have experienced an unresolved service failure in the past week.

It's an insult to injury when a company breaks a promise and then fails to adequately fix it. These repeated service failures cost customers time, money, and aggravation.

  • You have to contact a company five times to fix a billing issue.

  • A product breaks while under warranty, but the company won't fix it.

  • An airline cancels your flight and leaves you stranded.

Service recovery is ultimately about restoring trust. You can earn your customer's repeat business if you can get them to trust in your ability to avoid another service failure in the future.

Here are some resources that can help:

Conclusion

There's a reason the basics never go out of style. That's why I'm advising my clients to do a few things really, really well:

  1. Promise: Win customers by promising to solve their problems

  2. Action: Earn trust by taking decisive action to keep your promises

  3. Recovery: Restore trust with a flawless recovery in the event of a service failure

You can get a step-by-step guide for implementing these concepts in The Guaranteed Customer Experience.

Why great service recovery doesn't need to be free

Updated: February 9, 2024

Many customer service employees automatically offer free or discounted food, products, or services when something goes wrong.

  • Didn't like your meal? Here's a free dessert.

  • Not happy with your car wash? Next one's on us.

  • Shipment take too long to arrive? Get 20 percent off your next order.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, freebies and discounts can make service recovery worse, not better. Here's why we focus on free, and why that's a problem.

Why do we give freebies to angry customers?

Sometimes, a freebie is an appropriate way to resolve a service failure. Giving a customer a free cup of coffee to apologize for a long delay can be a small token of appreciation.

On the other hand, freebies can easily be overused.

I once worked for a company that managed the parking for a variety of hotels. The hotels’ front desk employees would give away free parking whenever a hotel guest experienced the slightest issue.

  • Room dirty? Here's free parking.

  • Swimming pool too crowded? Parking's on us.

  • Breakfast not delicious? We'll pick up the parking tab.

Parking had nothing to do with housekeeping, the swimming pool, or the hotel restaurant. But front desk employees knew free parking would hit the parking company's budget, not theirs. And it would usually make the guest go away.

Getting the guest to go away was the real reason for free parking.

Unfortunately, a lot of important things get neglected when a freebie is used to get an angry guest to calm down, stop complaining, and go away:

  • We don't listen enough to the customer's problem.

  • The root cause of the issue doesn't get investigated.

  • Steps aren't taken to ensure the issue doesn't happen again.

Using freebies and discounts to get customers to go away is completely missing the point.

It’s also not effective. A 2023 study conducted by Ilona E. De Hooge and Laura M. Straeter found that gifts lose value when offered as part of an apology.

In one experiment, the researchers found that 44 percent fewer people accepted a gift when it was offered as an apology for an error rather than a token of appreciation.

Your goal should be to get upset customers to go away. Service recovery should be about getting the customer to come back. To do that, you need to focus on rebuilding trust.

Why trust is essential to service recovery

There's a scene in one of my LinkedIn Learning courses where a coffee shop customer gets unreasonably angry because her vanilla latte doesn't have enough vanilla.

The scene is actually shown twice.

In the first version, the barista does everything wrong and makes the customer even angrier. You get the feeling the customer won't be coming back because she doesn’t trust the coffee shop will get it right the next time.

In the second version, the barista soothes the customer's angry emotions, but he also does something else that's equally important. He starts rebuilding trust with the customer by convincing her the coffee shop will make her next vanilla latte just the way she likes it.

She’s far more likely to return after this encounter than in the first scene.

Check out both versions of the scene for yourself.

  • Version 1: advance to :49

  • Version 2: advance to 2:27

How to rebuild trust with angry customers

It's important to defuse a customer's anger before jumping to solutions. In the coffee shop scene, the barista did a few things to de-escalate the customer's anger.

  1. He started with a service mindset.

  2. He caught his fight or flight response from taking over.

  3. He used the LAURA technique to empathize with the customer.

(You can find an explanation of all those techniques here.)

Listening is important part of defusing an angry customer. Part of that listening should focus on identifying the problem the customer is trying to solve.

The coffee shop customer wanted a latte with a lot of vanilla, and she initially felt slighted that her drink wasn't made the way she liked it. The customer even mentioned a competitor, signaling her intent to take her business somewhere else.

How did the barista fix this?

He sought to rebuild trust by working with the customer to make a vanilla latte exactly the way she liked it. Go back to the scene at 2:52 in the video and you'll see the barista proposing a taste test to make sure the latte tastes just right.

Conclusion

Freebies or discounts are sometimes helpful service recovery tools, but not always.

Notice that the barista focused on solving the customer’s problem, not giving away a free drink. The customer keeping the original drink was incidental, since the barista would have thrown it out anyway.

Check your own motivations before offering a freebie. Are you trying to get the customer to go away, or is this part of an effort to restore trust and earn the customer's future business?

Retain more customers

The Guaranteed Customer Experience shows you how to earn customer trust.

Why Gemba is the Best Way to Solve Service Failures

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

The CEO called me with an urgent training project.

Our parking management firm was in danger of losing an important contract at a hotel where we managed the valet and self-parking operation. The client was unhappy about poor service quality and gave us thirty days to improve.

The CEO told me to go to the hotel and train the staff and the manager. He wanted me to show them how to deliver service the right way, and then make sure they did it. This was going to be my priority for the next 30 days.

I decided to meet the parking manager and take a gemba walk. It was fortunate that I did, because it quickly became clear that training was not the problem.

A valet parking attendant is opening the car door for a guest.

What is a gemba walk?

A gemba walk involves going to where the work is done and observing it first-hand. It requires you to approach the situation with an open mind and ask questions to gain a better understanding of how people do the work and why they do it the way they do.

The term gemba (or genba) is a Japanese word that means "the actual place." It's a principle closely associated with lean manufacturing, but I've always found it to be a great way to diagnose service failures.

My gemba walk with the hotel parking manager was revealing.

Our client, the hotel's general manager, was unhappy because our valets frequently failed service audits conducted by mystery shoppers. These were auditors who posed as guests and evaluated the hotel on a comprehensive list of service measures. 

Graph showing actual mystery shopper audit score of 78% compared to a goal of 85%.

The mission was to find out why our valets were failing the audits.

I spent about an hour with the manager reviewing the valet operation. Unlike a mystery shopper, a gemba walk involves directly observing the work and talking to the people doing it.

  • We watched the valets serve guests.

  • I asked questions to learn about what they were doing and why.

  • We walked through the entire operation, include back-of-the-house areas.

This was just one shift, and the hotel was a 24/7 operation. I came back several times on nights and weekends to observe other valets in action and did another gemba walk with the supervisor who reported to the manager. 

We quickly discovered the root cause of the service issues.


What is the purpose of a gemba walk?

A gemba walk allows you to see insights that might otherwise be hidden. Leaders can be misled by data and easily jump to the wrong conclusions without seeing the full picture.

Remember the call from my CEO?

He had assumed the problem was training. Using this guide for diagnosing training issues, I knew that employees need training when they lack one of three things necessary to do their job:

  • Knowledge

  • Skill

  • Ability

The gemba walk with the parking manager quickly revealed the valets had the knowledge, skill, and ability to do their jobs. None of this was guesswork. 

  • I observed the valets providing excellent service to guests when the front drive was busy.

  • I observed them getting bored when the hotel's front drive was slow.

  • The valets told me exactly why they got bored and goofed off during slow times.

So it wasn't a training issue.

The problem was they didn't do the job consistently. The valets got bored when work was slow, lost focus, and started goofing off. They were also missing some critical information:

  • Mystery shopper reports weren’t shared with the team.

  • The valets didn’t realize the contract, and their jobs, were at risk.

I didn't have to suggest the solutions. The valets came up with some on their own, and the manager created a simple, but brilliant, plan to tie it all together.

When should you do a gemba walk?

A gemba walk is useful whenever you need to identify the root cause of a problem. There are a number of benefits to going directly to where the work is being done.

  • Test assumptions

  • Verify procedures are being followed (often, they aren't)

  • Talk to the people actually doing the work

Observing the work being done is one of the best quick fixes for solving performance challenges of any kind.

Throughout my career as a trainer, customer service manger, and a consultant, I've often seen gemba walks lead to very different conclusions than the initial diagnosis:

  • A "problem employee" was actually being victimized by a toxic coworker.

  • An incentive program designed to improve service made service worse.

  • A "short-staffed" team improved productivity by 25 percent without adding staff.

Gemba walks can also help you identify customer service icebergs.

An iceberg looks like a small issue on the surface, but a much larger and dangerous problem is hidden below the surface. For example, when the pages fell out of one of my books, I investigated the problem and discovered thousands of defective books had been shipped to retailers.

The author holding up a defective copy of his book, Service Failure.

How to do a customer service gemba walk

There are a few techniques that can make your gemba walk successful. Do a little bit of upfront planning, ask questions to approach the work with an open mind, and show respect to the employees doing the work.

Planning for a Gemba Walk

You don't need to do a lot of planning to prepare for a gemba walk, but a few simple steps will make the process much more useful.

  1. Clearly identify the objective. What are you trying to discover?

  2. Let people know you're coming.

These steps will help you get the cooperation and buy-in from the employees you observe. You'll learn a lot more, and get more forthright cooperation, if you avoid coming across as someone who is merely there to catch people doing it wrong.

I did a few things to prepare for my visit to the hotel.

First, I asked the CEO to let the president of the hotel division know what I would be doing, and that he had requested it. The president was a very hands-off leader, but I also knew he could easily get defensive. After all, the CEO was coming to me because the hotel division president had failed.

Second, I called the hotel parking manager. Fortunately, we already had a good relationship, so I was very candid about my project. I knew the contract was in jeopardy and it was my goal to help him save it.

Finally, I reviewed the mystery shopping audits. I wanted to make sure the mystery shoppers were looking at the same service standards we were training our valets to perform. (They were.)

Ask Questions

Keep an open mind and ask questions to reveal insights that you might otherwise miss. Resist jumping to conclusions. Even if you see an employee doing something wrong, asking why they're doing it can be revealing.

I asked a lot of questions when I observed the hotel valets. I even asked them why they were goofing off when I saw them get bored and start to stand in a circle and talk to each other. It wasn't an accusatory question— I really wanted to know.

The valets were very forthcoming about the reasons for this. The valets found it hard to stay focused and alert when nothing was happening. Most were young and inexperienced, and they enjoyed an easy camaraderie with each other, so goofing off was almost second nature.

They also had some suggestions for improvement.

  • Provide small tasks they could do in between guests.

  • Rotate positions during slow times to reduce boredom.

  • Share the results of the mystery shopper audits.

That last point was key.

The manager hadn't been sharing the audit reports with the valets. They knew the hotel's general manager was unhappy, but they had no idea the contract was at risk. And they didn't realize that losing the contract would mean losing their jobs.

Show Respect

Employees will generally be candid about how they do their job if you ask honest questions with an intention to help. Keep in mind that you're there to help them, not catch them doing something wrong.

With the hotel valets, I was careful not to come off as some corporate guy who was there to catch them doing wrong. I tried to convey to each one that I appreciated the work they were doing and wanted to help.

It was also important to show respect to the manager and the supervisor. Once we discovered the valets needed more information about the mystery shopper audits, I asked the manager what he thought could be done.

His idea was brilliant.

Additional Resources

Here are a few resources to help you plan your first gemba walk.

This short video provides some nice visual examples.

Conclusion

The CEO requested training, but I didn’t do any.

What I did was work with the valets, the valet manager, and the valet supervisor to understand the root cause of the problems. I then facilitated their ideas for improving service and keeping the contract.

The valets had made several suggestions for improvement. The valet manager tied it all together with a simple tactic.

He cleared a bulletin board in the parking office and mounted a piece of string horizontally across the board. Then he put a sign on the string that read "85%" to represent the target score for mystery shopper reports.

The manager began posting each mystery shopper report on the board as it came in. 

  • If it passed, it went above the string.

  • If it scored below 85 percent, he posted it below the string.

The valets immediately got the message. 

Nobody wanted to let the team down and fail an audit. They encouraged each other to stay sharp and implemented their ideas. The manager gave praise and recognition with each passing audit, and offered coaching each time an audit was failed.

The hotel's general manager was very happy with the results by the end of the month.

Graph showing the improvement of mystery shopper audit scores after one month.

My CEO was happy, too. He didn’t really care whether or not we did training. His goal was to save the contract, which is exactly what the gemba walk helped us do.

Cover image of Getting Service Right book.

In my book, Getting Service Right, I detail a number of service failures where the solution wasn't immediately obvious. The book also captures candid responses from employees:

  • Why an employee lied to customers.

  • Why an employee deliberately provided poor service.

  • What an employee really wanted to do when confronted by an angry customer.

Finding the solution to these problems often requires a gemba walk.

How Unresolved Service Failures Can Cost You Big Time

Sally's Mom loved the bouquet ordered through ProFlowers.

Sally's Mom loved the bouquet ordered through ProFlowers.

Service failures happen.

They’re unfortunate. Many are preventable. But make no mistake, they happen to every business. After all, we’re human.

Unresolved service failures are something else. They’re annoying and unnecessary. Continuing to fail at resolving a problem shows customers you don’t care, you can’t handle your business, or both.

Service failures also get far more expensive the longer they take to resolve. A 2013 Zendesk white paper estimated that waiting 48 hours to fix a problem costs companies 66 percent more than if they had solved it in just one business day. Way back in 2008, I wrote a post detailing how recovery costs rose rapidly when there wasn’t a quick solution. The longer it takes you to fix something, the worse it gets.

FTD recently provided another example. 

The costs of their service failure will be hard to spot on their profit and lost statement. Nobody in senior management may ever even notice.

That’s too bad for them. Hopefully, this post will ensure it doesn’t happen to you.

 

FTD's Service Failure

My wife, Sally, ordered some flowers via FTD’s website for her Mom. Her Mom was staying in a hotel for a few days and Sally thought the flowers would bring some extra cheer to her room. She paid extra for Sunday delivery so they’d be there when her Mom arrived.

An automated confirmation email arrived on Sunday signaling the flowers had been delivered.

Except they weren’t. That was service failure number one. It got worse. 

Sally called on Monday morning to see if the flowers could be delivered that day. She was told that someone would have to do some research and call back. No one ever called. That was service failure number two.

Sally called again late Monday afternoon. She still couldn’t get an update on the status of her delivery, so she asked to speak with a supervisor. The supervisor couldn’t guarantee the flowers would even be delivered on Tuesday. He was completely un-empathetic and did not apologize. 

That was service failure number three. Three strikes and your out. 

 

How it Cost FTD Money

This service failure caused FTD to lose money in a number of ways:

The first was labor. Two customer service representatives and a supervisor spent time talking to Sally on Monday about FTD’s service failure.

The second was revenue. Sally cancelled the order.

The third was a customer. Sally spends an estimated $300 a year with FTD. Now, she’ll spend that $300 with one of FTD’s competitors.

The fourth is goodwill. I wouldn’t take the time to write this blog post if FTD had fixed their error. It was their inability to correct a service failure that inspired me to write.

It may seem like FTD hasn’t lost too much if Sally takes her business somewhere else. After all, she’s just one customer.

But, what if this situation is just the tip of the iceberg?

Companies like FTD don’t spend much time looking for icebergs. They should. The cost of losing one customer like Sally might be small. But like an iceberg, what lurks beneath the surface might be bigger and more dangerous. 

How many customers has FTD lost because of unresolved service failures? 

 

ProFlowers Nailed It

Sally didn’t want to do business with FTD, but she still wanted to send some flowers to her Mom. She decided to give ProFlowers a try.

They delivered a beautiful bouquet without a hitch. Sally’s Mom loved it. 

ProFlowers earned Sally’s future business in the process. They did what they promised they’d do. No drama, no issues, just service. 

And, next to FTD, they look like rockstars. ProFlowers delivered flowers faster than FTD could issue Sally a refund.

Live Experiment: A breakthrough with Whirlpool?

I think I finally have a resolution after contacting Whirlpool 16 times to update an expired credit card. And, I've also confirmed my suspicions that there was a broken link in the chain. As I've written before, your service is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.

Background

My wife and I had a subscription where Whirlpool automatically sends out a new water filter for our refrigerator every six months and bills the credit card they have on file. Our credit card recently expired, but so far we've been unable to give Whirlpool the updated information. 

Breakthrough

Yesterday, I exchanged direct messages on Twitter with Chris, a Whirlpool employee who monitors their customer service Twitter feed @WhirlpoolCare. This led to a phone call where I explained that between my wife and I, we had now contacted Whirlpool 16 times in an effort to update an expired credit card. Chris listened, apologized, but like everyone else we had interacted with, he told me he was unable to help me. However, unlike everyone else so far, Chris offered an alternative solution and explained why he was unable to fix my expired credit card (more on the credit card in a moment).

The alternative we agreed upon was that Chris would send us a complimentary water filter as a gesture of goodwill. It would then be up to me to re-establish a new online account with my updated credit card as a workaround to the problem. (I could also find an alternative source for the water filter.)

This is huge because, as I explained to Chris, I have a house full of Whirlpool appliances. Before this incident, I wouldn't consider another brand. Now, I wouldn't consider Whirlpool unless this was resolved. If the filter arrives as promised I'll consider Whirlpool back on my list of preferred appliance brands (their appliances are really, really good).

The Broken Link

brokenchain_sm.jpg

Chris also revealed the broken link in their chain. The water filters are fulfilled by a third party, so Whirlpool customer service employees have no access to that company's fulfillment system. The only tool they are given is the instructions on using the website that they can relay to customers. This explains why each customer service representative we've encountered has been unable to help. Apparently, the system's designers never imagined the system could break so there were no contingency plans for handling this sort of situation.

Unanswered Questions

I didn't want to press my luck by asking Chris too many question since I was his last customer of the day and he had stayed a little late to talk to me. My top priority was getting a resolution and I had that now. However, there are a few unanswered questions that could be instructive.

What is the escalation procedure? If a system is broken, someone should be able to escalate. Why couldn't (or wouldn't) Whirlpool's customer service employees escalate this issue to someone who was empowered to fix it?

Where is the process broken? The specific problem was technical, but was it on Whirlpool's end, the fulfillment company's end, or both? When two parties encounter a problem, the instinct is often to point the finger at the other party, which means nothing gets resolved.

What's the full impact? I have to imagine my wife and I aren't the only ones to experience this problem. Is this problem really an iceberg? In other words, how much business is Whirlpool losing due to situations like ours?

Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It. The book is available in paperbook, e-book, and audio book formats.

You can learn more about the book at www.servicefailurebook.com or purchase a copy online at AmazonBarnes & Noble, or Powell's Books.

Service recovery from Heitz Cellars

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about three wineries that all handled a missing or delayed wine shipment in different ways. (See Good, Bad, and Ugly ways to handle the same problem.) Since then, Heitz Cellars has made a bit of recovery.

Heitz Cellars was my "ugly" example in the post because I had called three times to check the status of some missing wine and they had short shipped my order twice. Yesterday, the last two missing bottles finally arrived. The modest recovery came from the refund they issued to my credit card. This means the end result was I finally had my delicious wine ('07 Zinfandel) and I didn't have to pay for it. Heitz Cellars makes some terrific wine and this gesture was enough to keep me as a customer.

This also serves as another installment in my collection of stories that prove the longer you take to solve a customer service problem, the more expensive recovery will be.

Related posts on expensive service recovery:

 

 

Unexpected customer answers reveal "moments of truth"

There are certain stock phrases used so often in customer service situations that they've almost lost all meaning. They've become perfunctory and the responses they illicit from customers almost seem scripted. "How are you today?" asks the customer service rep. The answer, of course, is "I'm fine."

But what happens when the customer goes off script and says something unexpected? You can earn an "A" for service if you are recognize these moments of truth and are ready for a little improv. On the other hand, you might get a "C" or even an "F" if you don't seize the moment.

Here are some examples:

Did you find everything OK?
Expected Answer: "Yes"
Moment of Truth: "No". My wife, Sally, got this one at the bookstore last night. She was looking for some note cards but didn't find anything she liked. She bought a few other items and the associate at the cash register asked her "Did you find everything OK?" Sally said "No", but the associate missed the opportunity to make some suggestions. She simply ignored the response and continued the transaction.

How is your stay at our hotel so far?
Expected answer: "Good"
Moment of truth:"It's OK." There's a subtle difference here, but a savvy hotel associate will catch it and take action. I once gave this answer to a hotel associate while sharing an elevator. Instead of following up with "How can I make your stay better?" it got uncomfortably quiet until we got to her floor and she quickly exited the elevator.

How are you today?
Expected answer: "I'm fine"
Moment of truth: "I'm terrible". I must admit I dropped the ball on this one when I was a teenager working in a retail clothing store. I really didn't know what to say until the customer, seeing my surprised look, followed up with, "Well, you asked!" Yes, I did ask, but I also realized I hadn't cared what the answer was. From that point forward, I was ready for those moments of truth and knew to respond with, "I'm sorry to hear that -- what can I do to make your day better?"

What are your moments of truth?