Photo credit: Nick J Webb
Any business can make a mistake or have a problem. Airplane flights get cancelled. Products your website says are in stock are sold out when the customer drives across town to buy them at your store.
Sometimes, things only get worse from here. The customer's complaint never gets a response. The lost luggage is never found, and no one seems to care.
That's when clients go from mildly annoyed to irate and flaming you on Twitter or Facebook, or screaming at your returns desk staff. Then, they storm off to tell all their friends your company sucks.
In other words, they're out for revenge.
Once that's happened and you've pushed a customer over the edge, can you still redeem the situation? A new Washington State University study of two-time customer-service losers says yes.
Obviously, it's a touchy situation. But if you have the right circumstances, it's not too late to get a customer-service win and turn this around by tapping into customers' desire to reconcile the situation and have a positive outcome.
What determines your chances of redemption? WSU researchers Jeff Joireman, Yany Gregoire, Berna Devezer, and Thomas Tripp found customers' answers to three questions were key:
- How inconvenient was the problem?
- Who was to blame for the mishap?
- How fair is the recovery process?
If the customer was not greatly inconvenienced, thought they might bear partial blame for the problem, and feels they are treated fairly when they raise the issue, then you have the greatest chance of repairing the customer relationship.
The greater the inconvenience to the customer, the harder it will be to make it right. For instance, right now I want to buy a set of IKEA display shelves for my son's room. I live a looong way from IKEA. If I blow half a day to go out there because the website says my store has it in stock and it's not there -- honestly, I may never shop IKEA again.
Sometimes there are situations where the customer sees they could have done something differently to prevent the problem. Perhaps they could have alerted company staff to the problem sooner, before the situation worsened. This is a good opportunity, as there's still some sympathy that perhaps the business wasn't out to make the customer's life miserable.
Perhaps the point in the interaction that holds the most hope for businesses is the final one -- how fairly customers feel they were treated after they reported the problem. More staff training and consistent policies on how to handle customer complaints provide an opportunity to communicate fairness and win the customer back, the survey found.
The customer needs to feel the company cares and will go the extra mile to make it right. Then, the door is open to leave the customer with good feelings about the brand.
This type of redemption plays out every day in social media. A customer writes a snarky comment about a bad experience that the company has failed to respond to promptly.
But then, the company offers a helpful reach-out or discount deal via Facebook or Twitter that flips that customer and motivates them to leave a rave review in response.
Too many companies tend to think of these twice-bitten customers as beyond redemption. But the survey found the urge for revenge and the one for reconciliation are not opposites. The angry customer hasn't give up -- they still really wants to be heard and helped, and will love your brand if you show you care, even at that late point.
Ever won back an angry customer? Leave a comment and tell us how you got it done.
