Article: Angry Customers, The Best Form of Advertising

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Turning angry customers into advocates is the least expensive best form of advertising and promotion for your business or organization.

Are the employees in your business or organization equipped and empowered to adjust an angry customer’s complaint to his/her satisfaction? Yes or no? Your answer was possibly yes and no. Adjusting complaints quickly (service recovery) may be something that you’ve talked about with your staff but haven’t formalized a policy and communicated its importance.

A dissatisfied customer creates a wonderful opportunity to generate positive word-of-mouth advertising. If a complaint is resolved quickly with an upbeat attitude and the customer gets more than they expected, they become an enthusiastic promoter for your business! If they are not satisfied, they become a negative crusader.

According to customer surveys conducted by various organizations, a customer with a “better than normal” experience will tell 5 people about their encounter. The customer will want to tell their contemporaries, business associates, and family members about their good fortune. Their unscripted heartfelt adulation for their extraordinary experience positions the hearer to want to receive the same fine service and they may indeed become a new customer.

The secret to service recovery is to give a small gift after the complaint has been resolved. The amount spent on a gift or free service will return many times over in the form of new customers. See the remedy through to completion and give something to placate the customer. Airlines give free flights if they cannot honor your reservation. Some companies will give a coffee card with a handwritten apology.

Recently, my wife and I experienced a fine example of service recovery at the Willow Creek Restaurant in Mason, Texas. We ordered a chicken breast dinner and specifically asked that it not be cooked with any spices. The server duly noted our requests on his order pad.

When the chicken dinner arrived, it was prepared with what seemed like a double amount of spices. We brought it to the attention of our server and he resubmitted our order. About 10 minutes later he brought us our meal the way that we had ordered it. He adjusted our complaint quickly and without any negativity. The meal was very good, just like we ordered it, but in the back of our minds we weren’t too happy about having to wait an extra 10 minutes for our food.

Before we finished, the server said he would like to treat us both to a piece of pie because of the mistake on our order. We rarely eat pie, but who can turn down a piece of FREE pie? The pie was delicious and I’ll have to admit it turned our bitter experience into “sweet delight”.

We left a bigger-than-usual tip on the table and our feelings about the Willow Creek Restaurant are even more positive than before. Because an alert server was empowered to exercise service recovery, you are learning about a great restaurant and they are getting an advocacy message.

Here is what the server did right:

• He acknowledged that there was a mistake without placing blame.
• He quickly resolved our complaint.
• He was truly interested in making our experience pleasant.
• He offered a gift of appeasement (two pieces of pie).

Every business or organization—medical arts, professional service providers, business-to-business operations, retail, manufacturing, real estate, automotive services, nonprofit organizations as well as government—can benefit from a proactive attitude towards service recovery.

Know where your customers stand. Many times a dissatisfied angry customer will not voice their complaint. Establish an ongoing customer feedback program to keep abreast of their experiences. Paper and electronic surveys work well. The best survey is to have a non-employee call and listen to the customer. The customer can provide relevant information on your employees, processes, and your competitors.

Ongoing success in the workplace requires constant attention to the customer’s needs, wants, desires and satisfaction. If I had to pick one customer issue to focus on first for the majority of businesses, it would be service recovery training.

One of the best training mediums for allowing employees to grasp positive customer service methods is watching videos of employees interacting with customers in the wrong way. Then repeat the video scenario by adjusting it to the right way. Employees catch the ideas and try them out on external and internal customers. Concepts are more easily retained when they are they experienced successfully. Click here for more information about our customer service DVD videos.

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