My daughter loves to bring her prized possessions in the car whenever we go out. The problem: she often drops something in the cracks of her seat and then screams at the driver (usually me) because she can’t reach her Polly Pocket shoe, the skirt to her Zhu Zhu pet or whatever else she decided to lug in the car that day. It’s not my fault she lost her trinkets, but I get the anger, blame and frustration.
This childish behavior is typical of how many customer service reps behave when a customer confronts them with a bad service experience–defensiveness, blame, dismissive expressions or gestures, and little effort to remedy the mishap. Have you ever heard one of these comments before after addressing a customer service issue?
- “That’s our policy and I can’t do anything about it.”
- “I don’t work in that department and can’t help you with that.”
- “I just got back from break and know nothing about this.”
- “He’s new and doesn’t know what he’s doing yet.”
- “You can’t use that coupon because it expired yesterday.”
- “No one has ever had an issue with this before.”
Customer Service blunders and blips are inevitable. Smoothing it over with your customers will go over much better if you go on the offense, not defense. Jamie Giovanetto, President of J. Giovanetto Inc. and Project Manager for Professional Development at SHARE Technology Conferences, told me the best offensive play in customer service I have ever heard. Read and learn how an Outback Steakhouse in Louisville, CO hit a home run…
My wife and I entered an Outback Steakhouse one evening for a quick dinner. The hostess took our name and the need for a table for two. As we sat there, additional parties came in and then we noticed a trend. Numerous parties of three and four after us were being seated but we were not—the bypassing of us for larger parties continued past the time where we should have been given a larger table. Once I addressed the issue to the manager on duty, we were quickly seated, with a sincere apology and an appetizer ‘on the house’. At that point, we were satisfied with the quick response and enjoyed our free appetizer.
As it turns out, the owner of this and several other Outback locations was in the building and came over to our table, offered a sincere apology and indicated that the hostess was new and that he had replaced her for the evening and would provide her with additional training. He took the blame, placing it on himself as a training failure instead of the typical ‘blame it on the employee’ response. He then asked if he could talk to us again after our meal and offered to buy our desserts. He spent 20 minutes talking to us, gathering our opinion on a number of topics related to his restaurant and our overall observations and experience. This was a great way to handle such a simple service failure, well beyond what we expected. We were happy after the free appetizer and even more so after the free desserts and the personal attention from the owner.
But the purpose of this tale is what happened next—the owner picked up the tab for our entire meal, asking only that we tip the waitperson on the total bill. This was a fantastic response to us having to wait a bit longer to be seated than we should have and a great example of dealing with a customer service failure. Then he totally blew us away…he handed us a card and offered to buy us another complete meal, an appetizer, two entrees, two drinks and two desserts, if we would come back two weeks from that night, give them try, and give our comments to the duty manager that evening.
I usually paraphrase stories I mention in these articles, but I couldn’t trim this one. This Outback owner could start a customer service training school for restaurant managers and wait staff!! So now, I challenge all customer service professionals to stay off defense for a change and go to this measure every time a customer is unhappy. If you do, you are sure to strengthen your brand and keep your customers for life.