How Do You Recover?

Customer service is important but don’t forget your service recovery skills either. Research shows that a customer who has a good experience will tell three to five people but a customer who has a bad experience will tell 11 people and now with social media, I suspect it’s more.

This weekend I was away with our B&B group of seven people. We had booked a large and lovely place in Echuca (see the picture) with additional bungalow. We arranged and paid for it all over the internet before arrival. When we arrived at the agent we found that it was an additional $150 for the bungalow in addition to the $1,000 we had already paid even though this had not be advertised anywhere.

I raised this with the booking agent who happened to be the owner. Some of her comments included, “we have never had this problem before”, “My team know what they are doing I am sure they would have mentioned it”, “I wasn’t part of your original conversation so I can’t know for sure what was said”. At the end of the day, she had a very unhappy customer and she did not care.

There are many things that she could have done, at the very least acknowledging the emotive side of the transaction. While she may have got her $150, she won’t get any further business or recommendations from the seven of us who were here and she won’t get positive comments on her website. 

So how do you recover?