Failures in customer service are inevitable. Whether you’re just starting your hospitality business or are working as a well-oiled machine, you’re bound to slip up and disappoint a customer at some point.
- Your reservations desk forgets to accommodate a special request.
- Your airline has to cancel a flight to a popular holiday destination.
- A waiter in your restaurant is having a bad day and is impatient with an elderly couple.
- …
We are a part of an industry that is high-touch and driven by human interaction. Delivering a 100% error-free service is almost impossible, which is why the way a business recovers from those service breakdowns is what sets them apart from the rest.
But how do you seize that opportunity to not just resolve the issue, but also restore and even improve the guest's satisfaction?
That's where the importance of having a customer service recovery process comes in.
What is Customer Service Recovery?
Customer Service Recovery refers to the strategies a business has and the actions it takes to respond to (what the customer perceives as) a service failure. Effective customer service recovery turns dissatisfied customers into satisfied ones.
The Importance of Service Recovery
Left unresolved, service failures produce disgruntled customers who will be quick to tell their friends, family, and just about anyone who will listen about their poor experience. According to Khoros, 67% of customers tell others about their negative experience, and 65% of customers have switched to a competitor after receiving bad service.
Having an effective customer service recovery plan in place increases your chances of turning a frustrated customer into a happy one and salvaging your brand's reputation.
Aside from resolving issues in the moment, customer service recovery has the potential to improve customer relationships and increase customer loyalty, as it increases customer trust in your dedication to offering them the best possible experience. The same study by Khoros found that 83% of customers feel more loyal to brands that respond to and resolve their complaints.
When your team has the right skills, service recovery training, and support from management, service failures also offer an opportunity to learn, improve processes, and do better in the future.
The Service Recovery Paradox
The Service Recovery Paradox refers to the phenomenon that customers tend to think more highly of a business after that business has corrected a service issue than they would have if no problem had occurred in the first place.
The explanation behind the Service Recovery Paradox is that the successful recovery of a bad service experience leads to increased assurance and confidence among customers.
Developing a Service Recovery Process
While the benefits are clear, it can be hard to effectively turn a service issue into a success in the heat of the moment. The guest is upset, your staff has other tasks on their mind… Having a customer service recovery plan or process in place helps your staff to know how to respond to different types of issues.
Below, you'll find the key elements for creating a successful service recovery plan.
Listen
Practice Active Listening whenever a guest comes to you with a question, concern, or complaint. Making people feel heard can go a long way. At the same time, a guest who feels like they're not being taken seriously or like their problem doesn't matter now has two things to be frustrated about.
Here are some examples of phrases to use to validate a guest's upsetting experience:
- "I can see how this is frustrating."
- "I understand that this is upsetting."
- "I under how this is disappointing."
While listening, you also want to ask clarifying questions if needed, so you don't end up solving something that wasn't the core issue in the first place.
Apologize and Take Ownership of the Situation
Once a customer's complaint has been registered, it's crucial that
- they receive a genuine apology
- someone swiftly takes ownership of the situation and lets the customer know they'll solve the problem.
Even if a guest complains to a frontline worker who had nothing to do with the issue, this staff member represents your brand, and it's therefore important that they validate the guest's dissatisfaction.
Offering an apology also doesn't need to be an "admission of guilt." It's an impactful way of showing the customer that you regret their expectations haven't been fulfilled and you care about their experience.
To the customer, your team's hierarchy and who was involved in causing the issue don't matter. There is nothing more frustrating than a problem being passed around without anyone assuming responsibility. This means training your frontline staff to take ownership of a situation and management to empower frontline staff to make decisions.
As an example, The Ritz-Carlton encourages employees to spend up to $2,000 to solve guest issues. More than about the money, it’s about enabling employees to use their time, effort, and - when needed - the company’s money for service recovery purposes.
Unless a team member owns the interaction and feels like they are encouraged to make decisions, they will not be able to deliver high-quality service recovery.
Make Amends
Making amends means apologizing and taking responsibility. What the latter looks like depends on the situation and the individual customer. Hospitality businesses often react to service failures by taking something off the bill or offering something for free. While those tactics may alleviate a customer's frustration, they're not always to the point.
If someone booked your hotel specifically because they wanted to use the gym, but your gym is being painted during their stay, a discount might be seen as a nice gesture, but it won't solve their problem. Free day passes for a nearby gym, however, could.
When we make amends, we must do so in a manner that makes guests feel that they have been treated fairly. Try to offer alternatives to give them a sense of control and put them back in the driver’s seat.
Respond Promptly and Follow Up
When it comes to service recovery, timing is key. Be prompt and efficient in responding and resolving issues so that frustrations don't have the chance to fester.
Once you've settled on a solution, check with the customer if they're happy with how things were handled. If they're still with you, go talk to them in person. If not, send them a card or an email. Calling is also an option, but take into account that not everyone appreciates unsolicited calls from businesses.
Keep Guests Informed Throughout the Process
If you're working on a resolution but aren't communicating with your guests, it might seem like you aren't taking them seriously.
- Let them know which steps you're taking to resolve the issue.
- Communicate clearly what the solution looks like and how they can make use of it.
- Share what you've learned about what went wrong and how you'll prevent that from happening in the future.
Track Complaints ans Resolutions to Improve Your Processes
Don't forget about a complaint as soon as it's been resolved. Instead, log all service issues that arise and identify the root cause of each issue so you can prevent it from happening again in the future.
You'll also want to track the ways in which you've resolved issues and whether or not the guest was happy with the outcome. This helps you spot the best ways to respond in different scenarios.
Make it Easy for Guests to Complain
Research shows that only 1 in 26 customers will let a business know they've had a negative experience. The rest just leave without saying anything. Sending surveys after a guest's experience with you has ended can yield valuable feedback, but it happens too late to make service recovery possible.
You want to capture their discontent about an issue as soon as it arises. To do this:
- Be present on all the channels they might want to communicate their frustration through (your website, social media, phone, email, frontline staff, live chat, …).
- Incentivize them to speak up, by leaving little feedback forms in their rooms, telling them who to contact in case of an issue through posters in your elevators, asking them if anything is ok or could be better during their experience, and so on.
Provide Hospitality Service Recovery Training
Having a service recovery plan isn't worth much if your staff doesn't put it into practice. Make service recovery part of the training of new staff and invest in regular additional training around handling customer complaints and customer-facing communication.
Staff should also be empowered to make decisions that speed up problem resolution and recovery. It's helpful to include a framework in your service recovery plan that details when which types of decisions can be made and which solutions can be offered for various types of complaints.
Keep Your Process Up-to-Date
New services come with new risks, so make it a habit to include possible service failure scenarios for each new service in your customer service recovery process. It's better to prepare for possible mistakes proactively than to have to come up with solutions in the moment.
Take Steps to Prevent Misaligned Customer Expectations
A lot of service problems result from a misalignment between customer expectations and the services provided. You can decrease the occurrence of these types of issues by researching what exactly it is your customers expect during each step of their experience with you and anticipating their demands.
In line with this, it's important to communicate clearly and honestly about the services you provide, especially through your marketing channels. If you consistently oversell and underdeliver, disappointing your guests becomes almost inevitable.
A helpful tool in this regard is the SERVQUAL Instrument. This empirical model, designed by Valerie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry, compares service quality performance with customer service quality needs.
It essentially measures an organization's service quality performance against the needs of its customers on five broad parameters – Responsiveness, Reliability, Empathy, Assurance, and Tangibles. The model allows you to find and plug the gaps between actual and perceived service.
Problems as a Chance to Impress and Improve
How you respond when customers raise concerns will make or break their perception of you more than the actual issue will. Having a customer service recovery plan helps your staff know what to do when different problems arise and makes it easier to train them so service issues are handled in a consistent way.
Logging the issues that arise and how well your guests responded to the solutions you offered them helps you optimize your internal processes, lower the chances of the same issues occurring in the future, and tackle them better when they still do.
