One message that is consistent all through about service recovery in all my internet searches is that service recovery is about ensuring dissatisfied and irked customers after receiving poor service leave the business premises reassured, happy and more loyal customers. While emphasizing the need and importance of good customer recovery strategies in business, Hart, Heskett and Sasser, Jr. (1990) acknowledges that mistakes are inevitable and a critical part of every business service–however, dissatisfied customers are not.
They reckon that, while it is almost virtually impossible to put in measures that would prevent any problem or mistake from happening in customer service, businesses can learn to turn the tide and recover from such happenings. Service recovery done perfectly well has the potential to turn angry and frustrated customers into the best loyal ones – better even than if nothing went wrong in the first place. According to Tschohl (2005), service recovery is;
ââŠ.putting a smile on a customerâs face after youâve screwed up. Itâs solving a customerâs problem or complaint and sending him out the door feeling as if heâs just done business with the greatest company on earth — and itâs doing so in 60 seconds or lessâ (Tschohl, 2005, p. 18).
Poor or inadequate service recovery will definitely lead to customer defection. In order for an organization to craft the best and most adequate service recovery strategies strategist need to understand and indeed know what are the real primary causes of customer defection.
Well, many things in a business can result into irked and dissatisfied customers but they will all emanate or border on the failure to meet customersâ expectations and hence make a customer leave satisfied. Ideally, having dissatisfied customers necessitates the need for service recovery but even then when that is not done correctly or even done at all customers will have no choice but to leave you and seek elsewhere.
According to Lucas(2011), customer defection is inevitable when customers; perceive poor services in part of the organization that does not meet their needs, their problems are handled inefficiently or they themselves feel treated unfairly, and finally, when no adequate systems in part of the organization are put in place to prevent or even handle customers problems.
Good customer recovery strategies and hence proper and adequate measures to make amend when the organizations services or products are unable to meet the customersâ expectations are essential to ensure customers do not result in defection.
While every strategy or measure to be put in place purely depends on the specific issues the customer has against the organization, well there are available broad measures that an organization can put in place to ensure its broad service recovery strategy works or succeeds. These broad measures will either fall under any of the three subcategories namely; the organization, employees, and the customer.
Under the organizational level, a firm needs to ensure that all its processes, procedures, policies and structure as relates to customer service are effective and efficient. For instance, the policy, procedures and indeed the entire process of handling customer grievances should ensure unnecessary hurdles of bureaucracy are done away with, and that unhappy customers are able to get adequate and reassuring answers to their grievances as quickly as possible and in the most time conscious manner.
Under the employee banner, empowerment is vital to enabling customer service staff carry out their duty well and effectively as possible in a manner that leaves the customers happy to come back. Empowerment could be in the form of ensuring employees receive the relevant training ton ensuring resources and necessary permissions to handle customer complaints.
Third, but not the least, is the customer category. Surprising as it may seem, customers may defect because of themselves. Understanding the customer is vital to avoid defection. Some customers may not understand how your product or service works or might assist them but they will not ask. It is therefore incumbent upon the organization to diagnose and identify such customers to assist them to avoid losing them.
Having talked about service recovery and customer defection, let us now turn our focus on the real factor that necessitates the two, service breakdown. Service breakdown refers to inadequacies in service delivery that results to the organization as ability to meet customersâ expectations in effect culminating to unsatisfied customers (PRweb, n.d.).
Well, just like the cures given above to avoid customer defection, service breakdown remedies also fall in three categories namely, organizational, employees and customers. Organizational remedies are such that all processes, policies and procedure should aid and actually be designed in manner that ensures good service delivery.
This means that from the top management and indeed the entire line of authority should not lose focus on the customer and service delivery. The structure should empower those directly dealing with customers give the best services as well as enhance communication and timely feedback and where possible immediate remedial actions where deficiencies are noted.
Employees, on the other hand, could as well be the reasons for service breakdown. Here, attitude knowledge as well as communication skills of the employees can turn the tide between excellent service delivery to a disappointing service breakdown and vice versa. Empowering employees such as through training can ensure have the requisite knowledge and are able to communicate well offering solutions to inquisitive clients.
A customer service supervisor will however require going work an extra mile to ensure his or her staff is in their right attitude to handle the customers. Unlike knowledge and communication skills which if a customer service staff lacked can readily be identified, attitude is difficult to assess as even the best customer service representative could have a bad attitude on a particular day or client.
As such, it is always important that the customer service supervisor is able to read the psychology of his or her staffers and ensure that all are of positive attitude to avoid service breakdown. It is important to also always remind the staffers that in whatever they are doing they should not take matters personally but rather they should carry themselves as the organization. Once they understand that, attitude becomes much easier to manage.
In conclusion, customers will become dissatisfied if their expectations are not met and if they feel badly treated and or if ignored. As such, the very first strategy to ensure customer satisfaction is by surpassing their expectations. Never paint a notion of some expectation to the customer that you cannot meet.
Secondly, customers are indeed the king and they require to be treated like one- focus on the customer. Everything that is done in a business should not lose focus that customer is the king; they should all be geared to achieving and addressing customer needs. Third, but not the least, respect the customer. Business is the customer. No business can survive without customers. This basic tenet should not be lost and by what better way than to respect and treat the customer like a king.
References
Hart, C. W. L., Heskett, J. L. and Sasser W. E. (Jr.). (1990). The Profitable Art of Service Recovery. The magazine July 1990. Web.
Lucas, R. (2011). Customer Service Skills and Concepts for Success. 5th edition. McGraw-Hill Education: New York.
PRWEB (n.d.). What is Service Recovery — And Why Do You Need It? Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB). Web.
Tschohl, J. (2005). Loyal for Life: How to Take Unhappy Customers from Hell to Heaven in 60 Seconds or Less. Best Sellers Publishing: New York.