While most firms should strive to provide their customers with the best experience possible at all times, service incidents and failures will occur from time to time. Although these issues aren’t ideal, they do present companies with opportunities as well. Obviously, companies should not make it a habit of experiencing ongoing service incidents and failures with customers. However, in the hopefully rare times in which they do occur, if companies are able to rectify the situation, many times this ends up with customers actually being happier than they would have if things went off completely without a hitch to begin with.
This might not sound quite right at first, but if we think about it for a moment, it should make more sense. If everything goes very smoothly during a service encounter, it should lead to happy and satisfied customers, which is a very good thing. Nevertheless, when there are incidents of service failures or dissatisfied customers, and there will inevitably be at some point, this gives firms the opportunity to show customers that they care by doing what it takes to get things fixed and possibly go above and beyond in order to make things right. By doing this, companies can turn dissatisfied customers to not only satisfied customers, but also delighted ones at that.
This is because consumers tend to remember any hiccups (i.e., service incidents or failures) that occur during their interactions with companies. These hiccups can go a multitude of ways. One way is that a company does not rectify the situation and people leave as unhappy dissatisfied customers, or now ex-customers in many cases. When this happens, people tend to keep this negative feeling with them, recalling it and thinking twice the next time they consider doing business with a company. In addition, consumers may tell friends, family, and other individuals online or in-person about their poor experience, leading to negative word-of-mouth for the company. A second way that a service incident can go, is that the firm does what is necessary to make things right with the customer. In this case, customers will remember that the incident happened, but will also carry positive feelings with them, recalling that the company cared about their experience and satisfaction, and made sure it did what it could to remedy the situation.
Good companies understand this, which is related to a concept in marketing called customer lifetime value. That is, the entire stream of purchases that a customer will make with a company over the course of their lifetime. By keeping customers happy and doing what it takes to correct incidents when they occur, companies stand a much better chance of keeping loyal repeat customers for longer periods of time.
In some cases, this may mean taking a short-term loss on a particular transaction with a customer to keep them happy and retain them for years to come. This is because in order to fix a service failure or incident and retain a customer, it may be necessary for companies to compensate customers for the issue that occurred. Perhaps the customer was inconvenienced by a long wait time for their order, which can happen at a variety of businesses, from restaurants to online retailers. Additionally, perhaps there was an inability to fully accommodate a customer’s request, or the customer simply did not like a particular product and would like a refund.
In terms of customer compensation for inconvenience caused by service incidents, a little bit of compensation can go a very long way in terms of being meaningful to customers. These can be things as simple as taking something off of a customer’s bill, giving the customer an additional item for free, a discount voucher for a future purchase, or additional points towards the company’s loyalty program. Clearly, the type of compensation needs to be commensurate with the type of incident that occurred. However, as the old adage goes, many times it’s the thought that counts more than anything. Additionally, another important factor in the exchange is speed. Incidents should be corrected as quickly as possible, which also means that companies should empower employees and give them some autonomy and leeway to make things right promptly without having to wait on approval for every little thing, within reason of course.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree
that service incidents can actually present an opportunity for firms? Can you
think of any positive examples of times when an incident occurred and a company
went out of its way to remedy the situation for you? What impact did that have
on you and your future relationship with that company? Please share your
thoughts in the comments section below.
John Gironda, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His teaching and research interests include digital and social media marketing, consumer behavior, marketing strategy, consumer privacy issues, and integrated marketing communications. He can be reached at: jgironda@nova.edu
