He makes this comment.

Saw this in one of your articles. “Even the best bands get it wrong on stage sometime, and I’m not suggesting you control the service delivery so tightly that the individual personalities of people get stifled.”

Miles Davis once said something like – “It’s not about the mistakes you make but how you recover from them.”

I think Miles was on to something there.

In a previous article we talked about how clients make decisions about the quality of a service.  One of the points was that if you wanted to exceed the client’s expectations of service, you need to be able to demonstrate the qualities of Tangibles, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy.

One point I didn’t make is that when the service delivery goes poorly, you have an opportunity to make it good and, through that opportunity, you can exceed the client’s expectations.

If you run any business that involves people delivering the service, things will go wrong from time to time.  There’s a lot you can do to reduce the instances of service failure, but as long as there’s the human element involved, you won’t be able to eliminate it.

Think about a time when you bought a service – or a tangible product – and something went wrong with the service.  Let’s assume you said something to someone in the organisation about it (if you don’t provide clients with an opportunity to provide feedback then you need to start thinking about how you can begin to).

This is where things get interesting.  You tell the company that the service delivery was not great.  This is their opportunity to make it good again.  What do they do?

The poor companies either do nothing, make you feel like the mistake was yours, or grudgingly try and fix the problem. 

Other companies will do what they have to do to fix it – nothing more, nothing less.  In one sense, they’d argue they’re doing what you paid them to do (albiet late).

Good companies see service breakdown as an opportunity to exceed the customer’s expectations and win a customer for life.  You see, they know how to use the qualities of Tangibles, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy to their advantage.

Think about it.  A customer has complained about something that went wrong at your business.  Can you demonstrate empathy – putting yourself in their shoes and thinking about how they may feel.  Can you provide assurance to the client – a sense of confidence in your abilities to fix the problem. 

Can you be responsive – there’s nothing worse than complaining about something, and then having to follow up on the complaint because no-one seems to be doing anything about it.  One organisation I worked at at a slogan called TOFU – Take Ownership and Follow Up.  In one respect it’s a bit sad that these things need to be said – they should be common sense, but at least the TOFU concept reiterates the importance of being quick to fix a problem.

Finally, when there’s a breakdown in a service delivery, the tangibles become more important, because now more than ever your client is looking for visual cues to reassure them that your organisation can provide the service they’re looking for.

The important concept here is that service breakdown actually provides you with an opportunity to exceed the customer’s expectations and provide exceptional service.  It’s possible to develop a stronger client relationship out of a service breakdown than if everything went well the first time.

So, maybe Miles was right.  Mistakes are going to happen.  Accept that.  It’s what you do about them that can make your business great in the eyes of your customer.

What are some examples of how you’ve either been a customer and received poor service and then had your expectations exceeded, or done it in your own business.