Surface Ripples

Making up & Making Right

Things go wrong.  It’s a fact of life, particularly where humans or human interaction are involved.  When something goes wrong for customers in our business, our job is to make it right and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Making things right after we make a mistake is just as (some might say more) important as getting it right first time.  Every time we do right by our customers, we make a deposit into their ‘emotional bank account’.  Every time we make a mistaken, it means a withdrawal from the same ’emotional bank account’.  

Now for the problem: withdrawals tend to be larger than deposits.  Our customers ‘expect’ us to get it right (that’s what they pay for, after all).  As many Customer Service Reps have told me, ‘They never notice all the things you get right, but the tiniest little mistake sets them off.’  That’s the emotional withdrawal at play.

People don’t come to work wondering how they can mess up a customer’s day.  It happens all too easily: a reply that a customer perceives as rude/abrupt, a ‘clerical error’, the last in a ‘series of unfortunate events’ that has happened to this customer over a period of time, a ‘cultural misunderstanding’ – anything can act as a ‘trigger.

How we make up is more important than getting it right sometimes.  How do we:

• Say “sorry”?
• Make it up?
• Keep them loyal? 

It’s difficult sometimes - we may not WANT/LIKE the customer (particularly if they’re always rude, demanding, time-consuming).

Social media & reviews from users only add to the mix.  One unhappy reviewer can undo all the good work of the other 99 happy ones.  For someone looking from the ‘emotional deposit’ point of view, that can be bad for business.  

Making up (correcting the error quickly) is easy.  Recognising and then resolving the error or problem quickly goes a long way to helping.  ‘Making right’ is an art and not always easy.  Regaining a customer’s trust takes longer.  If, however, we’ve made enough emotional deposits in the past, they’ll be more forgiving.  If not, we’ll have a much harder road to travel.

‘Making up’ is keeping business by ensuring the mistake doesn’t happen again.

I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Leadership, Selling

posted by William Martin @ 10:55