I’ll set the scene; its Christmas morning, there’s snow outside, the smell of roast Turkey in the oven is wafting around the house and the unwrapped gifts are stacked under the tree. Everyone begins passing round the presents, wrapping paper thrown everywhere and you’ve realised you bought mum the wrong scent of perfume. It is a disaster.
Okay so maybe I am being a little melodramatic but I'm sure this has happened before, and will probably happen again. But the question is what does this have to do with the customer experience? It is in fact closer than you may think.
Customer recovery is a critical part of managing the customer experience; in the above instance the son or daughter needs to quickly rectify the situation by ordering the correct perfume that same day online (and get a little something extra on top to say sorry) – and this should be regardless of the reaction from Mum, whether it be a smile, disappointment, tears or anger. The son/daughter should then also learn from the experience for next year, and pay more attention when purchasing presents so the mistake won't be repeated.
All in all, mum is happy (even if I painted a fairly materialistic picture of her) and the whole episode has been forgotten. Or I could say the customer has been recovered.
Now in my example you would expect the mother to forgive her child regardless, but unfortunately for brands the relationship between the business and the customer isn’t quite so forgiving. But there is an opportunity here as well; customers generally have different expectations from companies. Rightly or wrongly most do not expect to be recovered. But if a customer is quickly contacted and their issue dealt with in a timely manner, then their overall satisfaction can soar higher than it would originally have been, higher than if there was no issue in the first place.
While we of course do not advocate frustrating every customer so that they can be recovered, there are incidents when customers have been left feeling disappointed, upset or angered. NICE Fizzback’s unique and award winning solution enables businesses to highlight these dissatisfied customers and quickly turn a negative into a positive, a detractor into a promoter.From everyone at the Fizzback Blog we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Tom Lynam
NICE Fizzback will be making available their latest white paper on Customer Recovery in 2012. Register your interest in recieveing a copy by emailing info-fizzback@nice.com
For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback