When at First You Don't Succeed, Try Service Recovery!

Not too lengthy ago I was at a conference for Service Management. Immediately after signing in at the registration desk, I was given a little lapel pin with multi-colored blinking LEDs. As the father of two modest youngsters the first thought that ran by way of my mind was that my children, both of them old enough to no longer hurt themselves with a lapel pin and still young sufficient to go gaga over colorful blinking lights, would get a kick out of one of these. As anybody who has even more than 1 child knows, it is dangerous to bring household only one of anything, so I asked if I could have a second pin and explained why.

As rules would have it, only one pin was allowed per registered participant, even if the pins only cost fifty cents, the event price me nicely over a thousand dollars, and both I and the lady at the registration desk knew full nicely that by end of the conference she would have a hand full of extras that she would either throw away or stuff in a drawer to gather dust forever. Not a massive deal, having said that. I was sure to uncover some other trophy to bring home. I was in Kansas and cowboy boots crossed my mind, with the challenge becoming translating my children's European shoe sizes to US sizes.

Inside a few minutes of discovering a seat in my very first session and starting a chat with the fellow next to me, a person tapped me on the shoulder and before I knew it, I had two lapel pins handed to me. That was nice, I thought. Then I thought some extra and saw that it was more than nice, it was "Service Recovery".

What relevance does this have to Service Management?

There are a number of takeaways from this encounter.

1) It is by no means too late to make things perfect. We all make mistakes every now and then, but it is never too late to go back to a client who suffered under our error and make amends. Both you and the client really feel superior for it. Since just about nobody engages in "Service Recovery", your client could possibly even keep in mind you for life. As well, addressing your mistake mentally reinforces you to not repeat that mistake.

2) You don't have to wait for an angry customer to do the right thing. When I didn't get the lapel pin, I wasn't upset. I didn't express anger or even disappointment. Nonetheless, just for the reason that a customer doesn't verbalize their disappointment, doesn't mean they aren't disappointed. It is enough if you would be disappointed if you had been in their position.

three) At times breaking rules is the ideal factor to do. If the value created by breaking the rule outweighs potential negative consequences, then go for it. Rules that are in no way broken never alter.