Your reputation wit
h your customer isn’t tarnished by making a mistake; but how you respond to your mistakes.
h your customer isn’t tarnished by making a mistake; but how you respond to your mistakes.Some quick tips on how to best respond to your mistake:
- Take full responsibility for fixing it. Responsibility doesn’t mean “taking the blame”. Responsibility means being able to respond (response – able), to take action to fix the issue.
- Acknowledge that this situation is certainly frustrating and inconvenient to the client – and that you are going to do everything you can to eliminate as much inconvenience as you can.
- Note: If the correction takes awhile – don’t keep the client in the dark, while you are correcting the issue. If you don’t periodically update them on your progress, they will automatically assume you are doing “nothing” to help them – because they can see no evidence that you are doing “something”. This runs the risk of them telling ten of their friends of your lack of customer care – even if you have good intentions.
- If you don’t know how to fix the situation, ask the client how they would like you to fix the situation and how often they would like to be updated. Even if you can’t do exactly what they want, it will give you some insight and clues on what your next steps should be.
- The goal here is to make sure the client is delighted with the final outcome (not that you are happy with how you handled the event). And you can’t delight the client if you have no idea what will turn this around for the client. Therefore, don’t be afraid to include them in the process. People enjoy providing their opinion and advise to various situations. This will be no different.
- Go above and beyond expectations in fixing the issue. This would include (but not limited to) additional products and service; or even a full refund in addition to the product or service.
- Do a follow-up after the situation has been fixed, to make sure the client is fully satisfied. Thank the client for pointing out the problem and being so patient while you fixed it.
- Include a thank you note to the client summarizing the events, how you fixed it and procedure changes that you put into affect to assure no one else get puts into the same difficult situation that the client did.
The client not only wants his/her issue fixed, but an assurance that it will never happen again. Providing them tangible evidence that you have changed the procedure that caused the mix-up in the first place provides them this assurance as well as illustrates your commitment to continuous improvement and that you took their issues extremely seriously.
There are many other ways to delight your client. If you need additional ideas, why don’t we schedule an appointment, where I get to know more about your unique situation? And then I will be happy to make recommendations on what your best steps are moving forward.With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.