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So my background is in hospitality, my first few jobs were in hospitality
coming from Florida, I had a great opportunity to work in
places like Disney World and Universal Studios
along with restaurants and other other theme parks.
And so when I'm out and about
on my daily sojourn I'm looking at
how people are interacting
and how people are treating their customers
and especially in in the hospitality industry,
in restaurants or in stores
and it's
amazing to me how often the opportunity
to make what is a minor mistake
into
a great opportunity retain
a customer's loyalty.
and recently I was
in two different coffee shops
one in, both in Beijing, but one
was an example of a
very poor
treatment of the customer
and a loss of an opportunity to regain that trust or rebuild that trust
with the customer
and then the other and excellent
demonstration of
keeping that loyalty or building that loyalty even stronger.
This first coffee shop
I was in, the customer walked up to the register
ordered his drink
and upon receiving the drink
explained that it was the wrong
drink that it wasn't exactly what he order wasn't it wasn't made to his
specifications.
And upon doing this the person
the barista at the coffee shop said that "nope!" that's what he
ordered
and
when
the customer again said, "No, that's not
what I specified, that wasn't what I ordered"
the barista went to the register grabbed the receipt
and showed him on the receipt
eliminating
all possibility that it might have been the barista's fault
for punching in something mistakenly
and really
irritably or upsetting this customer and he became
obviously irritable and
stormed off.
So there was an excellent opportunity to retain this customer
or even build more trust or more loyalty
because of great service
and instead they they wasted that opportunity.
Now, a few weeks I, myself, was in a coffee shop
and I
drink quite a bit of coffee so I was
using my 'frequent drinkers' card
and I get points and this one
register that I went into
was not working
it didn't register my points
and
the barista said, "I'm sorry" and
"It's down. The system's down and we can't give you your points."
I then got on the WiFi of
coffee shop,
sent them
an e-mail, their customer service an e-mail
and was
literally amazed. I was about to go into a meeting,
I explained the situation via email. When I came out of the meeting, about an hour
and a half later
I had received
not one but two
separate e-mails
The first e-mail
apologizing
telling me that they understood how I felt
and that
in fact
that I was right to feel that way and that they would remedy the situation
if i only provided them this information.
I was impressed with that response, and
fifteen minutes later I saw the second e-mail
which said,
"Well actually Jeff, we
from your e-mail
were able to
to track down your code and your card number
and we've already put the points on
so don't even worry about something or responding to the first e-mail because
we're going to have done this."
That pro-activity
that ability to take what could have been a
a potentially dangerous situation
was used to build
loyalty and now I'd like to tell you when I see
that the first coffee shop, the brand of the first coffee shop
from the first story, I walk, I steer clear
I go to the
one where
they use that opportunity to build loyalty to its full extent.
So what's important here
to remember is that
an angry customer or upset customer is a
gifts to the organization or a gift to
to whatever
company you might be working for
because it shows that that care enough
to complain.
So number one they care enough to complain, and number two we need to remember
that this is a
perfect opportunity
to reaffirmed that person
in their belief, in their loyalty
to the company
by going above and beyond their expectations and making them a
continued user or continue supporter
of your organization because of service.