Have you ever experienced or do you know of great service recovery stories?
You know what I mean. Someone messes up. It could be as simple as the line begin 30 minutes longer than it should be and some manager comes by a gives out $10 gift cards for the next time you shop. It could be as extravagant as someone replacing your $20 broken item with an item worth double the price. Whatever it is, when has someone gone out of the way to make sure they didn't lose you as a customer?
Thanks.
Answers (5)
Paul G
Senior Real Estate Consultant at Florida Homes Realty
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My favorite is that Home Depot and Lowes allow me to return/exchange goods without a receipt. I always over buy when I do projects and I can never find the right receipt. They give me store credit and ya-know, I really like that. ;-)
Helena G
Supply Chain Professional - LION
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There are many stories of major company crisis that ended up in improving their reputation. Classic ones are Tylenol and Odwalla Juices. When poison was found in Tylenol caplets, the company had an immediate response and massive recall. When dozens of e-coli cases were related to Odwalla apple juice, they developed new processes afterwards and improved their facilities. Last year again it was Mattel who had many recalls of their toys.
In a smaller scale, I always try to speak with a company when I have an issue, and certainly, it has always been resolved in a favorable way. I can name a few: CVS (wrong pictures returned), Publix (wrong vegetables in a bag), Bed, Bath & Beyond (incorrect bill), each with outstanding customer service and correction.
Ajay M
Senior Manager - Branch Head
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Nokia in the year 2007 had recalled about 46 million units of the 'BL-5C' model of mobile phone batteries manufactured between December 2005 and November 2006 by the Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd., Japan due to some reports and consumer complaints with an issue of over-heating of the battery.
In very rare cases, the battery had even exploded while charging due to the the excess heat.
There were no reports of any casualties or damage to humans or property except the mobile phone (where it exploded) and otherwise the problem and damage was just restricted to the battery.
But, despite of having such an extremely low failure rate, Nokia decided to mount a large scale PR exercise and replace all the eligible customers batteries on a 'free-of-cost' basis...
They even introduced the scheme of customers could check online from the Nokia site whether they were eligible for a battery replacement and then if so, were to fill an online form where the battery was dispatched to the customers' registered addresses with a 'postage prepaid' envelope to send the defective/old battery back the Nokia office address.
This scheme / facility was a hit for Nokia and their customers were more than satisfied with the customer service and in the end instead of being a damage control exercise, it turned out to be a marketing and PR campaign for Nokia with even more word-of-mouth publicity being created.
There were of course a few disgruntled customers who felt left out as they weren't eligible to avail a 'free' replacement of their batteries, but then that would be a few dissatisfied customers no matter what ever scheme or gimmick you tried...
But on the whole, since an overwhelming majority were happy in the end, that is more than enough to declare and state the scheme, operation and exercise as a success.
Links:
- http://www.techgadgets.in/mobile-phones/2007/14/nokias-bl-5c-batteries-have...
- http://batteryreplacement.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en/
Clarification added 12 months ago:
Another point I forgot to add was that Nokia managed to prevent a mad scramble at their authorised service centre (ASC) network and causing an overload on their staff, by making this exchange scheme / offer available from the customers home/office itself, so this benefited the customers too from having to take time out specially to visit a Nokia ASC and then end up spend hours in a queue.
So, both Nokia and their customers were very happy...
Jay T
Leadership and Management Professional
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Most service recovery stories are anecdotal and word of mouth, but for those that make the cut and get published, there are a couple of groups that do a great job telling other people's stories. One is Quint Studer of the Studer Group. These are more healthcare related than anything else, but if you're looking for Customer Service, Quint in the man! Simple Truths website also does the milk and honey stories that tug at your heart strings (and most are religious in nature), so check them out.
I suspect if you simply asked your search engine the question it would spit out the top 100 sites. I have several that would delight you, I'm sure.
Marty S
Senior Training Specialist at USDA
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Great question Doug. One of the biggest and well known is Johnson and Johnson and how they handled the Tylenol scare. They didn't ask "what is it going to cost us to pull all of our product from the shelves?", they asked "what will it cost us not to pull all of the product from the shelves?". As a result, people still buy tylenol. That move sought long term mutual benefit and engendered trust. Trust is the basis for all relationships.
Jay, thanks for the scoop, I'll have to check those sites. I love this kind of stuff and understand there are real differences in the tangible results that can be shown, but still like the heart stuff as well.
