BUSINESS BASICS NUMBER 10
Recovering well after a customer complaint. That is an extremely important business basic. I am not a prophet, but I can predict that one day your business will receive a customer complaint. Recovering well has everything to do with how you handle that complaint. Companies that recover well consistently follow these two basic steps:
1—To begin with, we agree with the customer that this should never have happened. Simply based on who we are as an organization, none of our customers should ever be subjected to this kind of problem. We need to acknowledge this strongly to the customer and apologize. That all by itself buys lots of “stock” with the customer.
2—We need to make the customer whole. That will vary depending on the circumstances of course, but the point is that we need to do whatever it takes to fix the problem for the customer. Determining how to do that is not usually too difficult. Just do it and do it with a friendly attitude.
If we can do those two basic steps, then we will recover well after a customer complaint. Moreover, recovering well is what sets your company up for future business with that customer.
