Customer Recovery Skills

On some occasion, no matter how hard you have tried, the situation with a customer has gone haywire and you must do some recovery. Below are some skills to help you:

1. Thank them. Customers can tell when you are faking it. Be sincere and thank them for taking the time to come to you with this. This a time when tone of voice and body language are all important. Use a tone and express feelings in the same manner as you would if you had been wronged.
2. Take responsibility for fixing the problem. Don't lay blame and don't make excuses, just solve the problem. Many customer-focused organisations have a policy that the associate first hearing of a problem owns it until it is resolved. That may mean getting others involved, doing some research, and then getting back to the customer with an answer.
3. Solve the problem quickly. Customers want a resolution to the problem, and they don't want to wait very long for an answer.
4. Involve the customer. Find out what is most useful to them, not what is easiest for you. Involving the customer is easy to do but is a skill often forgotten in service recovery.
5. Apologised at the end of the inconvenience, the disruption, or whatever the problem has caused. Then very importantly, do something EXTRA. Correcting the problem is not enough. Recognise the 'hassle factor' that your customer experienced. A complementary gift or discount are examples of little extra that don't cost much and make the difference in winning back a lost customer.
6. Follow up. Make sure the customer is satisfied. Follow-up telephone calls are particularly effective.

Dealing effectively with angry patrons is one of the most important challenges you face in retaining and expanding your customer base. 

This is why I have so much passion  for customer service, I love to deal with challenging patrons.