When It All Hits the Fan

We've all experienced (or created) a customer service failure-a time when customer loyalty is stretched to the max. Few events are more stress-inducing than a service blowout, especially since it's never intentional.

We should consider ourselves lucky when a client calls us on the carpet for such a failure. Customer loyalty researchers say that 70% of disgruntled buyers take immediate, punitive action against a company without complaining. Some business owners never know what hit them.

What's worse is that you're likely to lose some, if not all, future revenue from 20% of complaining clients.

There's some good news when a client complains, though. If you can successfully resolve a complaint, that client is more likely to be loyal to your business than one who never had a problem.

You don't build loyalty by creating grumpy clients. When a client is miffed, get on it fast and you may have a client for life.

Comments

[Jim Logan]

Great information.

A thought hit me when reading your post that I thought I'd share. An important thing to remember when things go wrong is to communicate. The longer a customer goes without hearing from their vendor when a crisis hits the madder and disappointed they become.

It does little good to be responding in the background if your customer, who hasn’t heard from you, believes you’re doing nothing. Perception equals reality and as such you need to manage the perspective and expectations of your customer throughout the crisis.