William J. Schroer
In this third installment of our article on the Problem Customer, we pick up our story in the middle of the three Rs. That is, three principles for dealing with a customer when the Library or staff of the Library have made an error. In case you came in late you may wonder why during a discussion of the “Problem Customer” we are talking about errors made by the Library. In dissecting the genesis of “problem customers” we find they often evolve from one or more incidents of poor customer service that were subsequently handled badly. The point? If you can eliminate customer service problems...or at least be able to recover from the errors you do make, you will minimize the opportunity for Customers with Problems to evolve into Problem Customers.
Today, we move from the first “R” of Recognition, to the
second and third “R”s, Recovery and Restitution. If you missed
Part 2 or Part 1 (or both) the original articles may be downloaded from
our website at http://www.socialmarketing.org/ezine/ezine.htm
The concept of Recovery is fairly straightforward and yet, I run into...as you probably do, examples of customer service gaffes in restaurants, gas stations, hotels and all kinds of places where the idea of recovery is to say “I’m sorry”. Well, I’m sorry too, but that won’t fix the problem, which is the concept behind “Recovery”. Remember, the “I’m sorry” part of the story is part of “Recognition”. That was last week’s part of the solution and we can’t use it to cover two “R”s.
In a phrase “Recovery” means “Fix it”. And, “Now” would be a good word to link to the “fix it” phrase.
Further, part of Recovery and “fix it now” also means without further inconveniencing the customer. That is a big part of the concept. So, when the promised book isn’t available for the customer who drove down to the library to pick it up, the solution of “I’m sorry. Can you come back tomorrow to get your book? I’ll make sure its here” is not only not recovery, its insulting and is the kind of customer service failure that leads to Problem Customers. Yet, there are many organizations who would allow or even encourage the above resolution and call that good “customer service”.
Recovery means that it gets fixed now without further inconveniencing the customer. In the case of our example of a promised book which has disappeared, there are several optional solutions. Let’s assume the missing book will be found or will probably be found within the next 24 hours. Some alternatives include:
-
“We sincerely regret this incident happened and that you have been inconvenienced. If you will leave us your phone number and address, one of our pages will call you to arrange to deliver the book to your home at your convenience. Will that be acceptable?
Or. - We sincerely regret this incident
happened and that you have been inconvenienced. If you will leave
us your
address we will overnight
the book to you as soon as it is recovered. You should have it by
10:30AM tomorrow. Will that be acceptable?”
Or...assuming now the book may be lost or it can’t be determined when the book will be found... - “We sincerely regret this
incident happened and that you have been inconvenienced. We are
going to
request an Interlibrary
loan of the book and we will bypass the normal shipping procedure
to our library and have it sent by overnight delivery directly to
you. You should have it by 10:30AM tomorrow and I will call Interlibrary
loan now to determine whether they have the book available. Will
that be acceptable?”
Or... - “We sincerely regret this incident happened and that you have been inconvenienced. This book is available at the local bookstore. One of our pages is going to drive over to the bookstore and purchase the book. She will then deliver it to you for your use. We would ask that you not return it through the book return at the end of the borrowing period but turn it in to the circulation desk as it will need to be catalogued into our system. Will that be acceptable to you?”
The point, I think, is made that any reasonable creative solution may be employed to “fix” a problem created by the Library while not inconveniencing the customer further. Now, while some library directors may raise eyebrows at the potential cost of these solutions, I’ll ask you to collectively hold that thought for a moment. I will address the issue of the cost of fixing problems when we complete our discussion of the three R’s.
Can every customer service problem be “fixed” allowing for recovery as easily as the example provided? No. But an amazing number of customer service failures can be recovered if there is a bias to do so. I would submit the bias for far too many front line staff in too many libraries is to apologize and in the case of our example, offer to call the patron when the book arrives, so the customer can make another trip for the same item. I would further submit the staff can come up with some pretty ingenious “fixes” that will be found acceptable by customers...once the staff are given permission to do so.
To summarize, Recovery means “fixing the problem now without further inconveniencing the customer”.
As a side benefit, a number of articles in the literature demonstrate a service problem that is appropriately “recovered” leads to a higher degree of customer loyalty for the organization than the level held before the problem occurred.
Restitution (3rd R)
The concept behind restitution lies in the principle that Recovery is not
enough. Even if you take the heroic stand of overnighting the found book
to the customer, that customer still didn’t get the book when it
was promised. They were still inconvenienced. The Library which promised
the book at a certain time to this customer failed to live up to the
promise. At this point, it is incumbent on the Library to demonstrate
good faith and a willingness to “make the customer whole” by
going above recovery to “restitution”.
Restitution is sized to meet the level of inconvenience or disadvantage faced by the customer. If the Library charges a fee for videos and the customer in question has rented videos in the past, offering a coupon for the free rental of several videos may reflect a good faith effort at restitution. If the Library’s copy machine was jammed when a customer needed to make copies for an important meeting, providing a “credit” card good for free copies for a month may be satisfactory. If the customer doesn’t want to be provided with any tangible means of restitution, the Library may buy a book of the customer’s choice and donate it to the Library on behalf of the customer. The solutions are only limited by the imagination of the staff and the willingness of the customer to be made whole by a gesture on the part of the Library.
In essence, the Library is demonstrating to the offended customer that being sorry means more than just words and more than fixing it. It means making the customer whole and feeling as good or better about the Library as before the episode occurred.
Cost
As you can imagine there is a cost attached to Restitution as well as
to Recovery. Both costs may be avoided by simply saying “I’m
sorry”, but as was pointed out, the apology does little to solve
the customer’s problem. And, in fact, cost is a good thing in
this case.
Why? Because without cost, there is no incentive for the Library to fix the service problem. In the most calculating logic, why should a director work to solve a service problem when a free apology will get them “off the hook?” While most directors wouldn’t be so cold and calculating, the cost involved in recovery and restitution serve as a reminder to everyone that service failures are a bad thing and need to be corrected.
Ideally, if the costs of service recovery and restitution are tracked as a separate line item, directors should be able to see their costs for service problem resolution go down as systemic “fixes” are put in place to eliminate the cause of the service glitch. In other words, costs are the “currency” for tracking the level of customer service failures and, when fixes are put into place, a method of determining if the fixes are working. Without cost it is too easy to ignore the problem...and continue to create customers with problems. And...customers with problems often end up being Problem Customers.
In our next edition, we move on to Part 4 and address the issue of a
customer who has made an error, and how do we fix that, without losing
a loyal customer or turning that customer into the path of the Problem
Customer? Stay tuned...