Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

And the problem that leaders have is twofold. Number one, how do we get our people to appreciate an upset customer? Emotionally, it’s the wear and tear moment on the people who are serving the customer. Let’s face that, right? But the reality is that people who are complaining to you, they have a choice. They could not complain to you and instead go to the world online and tell everybody how bad you are. Which would you like? Okay. Now here’s the other is that when they bring you their complaint, they’re giving you an opportunity to actually be able to respond and reply to that. So it’s kind of like, remember in that movie, Rocky, you know, when the person’s down and everybody’s kind of cheering, “Get up, get up.”

So here’s what an employee, here’s what a team member can do when you’ve got an upset customer. Number one is if you, you know, hear what’s going on. And you express concern right off the bat and you solve the problem like you fix it, you will get back a little bit of emotional appreciation, attention. Let’s just say that the loyalty that you lost because of the problem goes up a bit. But if you fix the problem and you show genuine human concern, this is the emotional side, no AI, no tech, no robot is ever going to be able to do that, right? You say, “I’m really sorry that this happened. I can understand that it was, you know, problematic for you. And we really apologize.” You might get back to where you were, but also when something goes wrong and you fix the problem, you share your concern and you do something extra, it doesn’t have to be a lot, it doesn’t have to be a discount.

It could be, “Let me have a team member here carry this out to the car for you.” It could be, you know, “By the way, we’ve got this, you know, special thing, and it’s about to expire. But I can make it available for you if you’d like, and give you an extra two weeks to think about it.” Or, you know, whatever it may be, it’s that little something extra. The loyalty will go higher than it was before. Why? Because now that customer knows that if they have a problem with something from your organization, you’ve built a culture where your people are going to fix it and care about me and set me right again. So that’s what you want to build a culture so they can do. We call that bounce with service recovery.

But the value is not just that they did not flame you online. The value is that those people are showing you where you’re destroying value in your product, in your delivery, in the attitude of your people, in the relationship that they were expecting to build with you. Remember those four categories we talked about earlier? Or these are the people who will give you suggestions or even give you competitive intelligence and say, “Well, how come you’re not doing like that other company?” You may not know what that other company is doing and that can give you a good idea. A complaining customer can be your best friend. As a leader, you need to build a culture where people understand that and they have the education to support it, and you give them the support to actually implement it.