Customer Service: Good, Better, and Priceless Accountability

In those moments when your team, your customer service people, the front line make a mistake, what they do next, says everything about your brand. Mistakes happen to all of us. Great leaders of extraordinary brands own up to them.

In today’s digital world being good is expected. Being good may get you “liked”. Being sorry without action to make up for the mistake can get you a bad review, ruin a relationship and start the unraveling of your brand.

Used to be if you did something good for a customer she might tell a few of her friends. Disappoint today and your brand could be splattered all over social media and not in a good way.

Good, Better, Priceless:

1. Management making it right after finding out about a mistake. – “Good.”
2. Empowering front line people to make it right on the spot – (build in accountability and brand promise in your company’s processes) Systemized Accountability – “Better.”
3. Management systematically monitoring service is aware of the mistake, asks customer how can we make this right after the mistake is rectified and then doubles whatever they want it, assures the customer it will never happen again to them or anyone else. – “Priceless.”

Leaders need to model world class accountability, take the customer’s pain and make it their own. Leader’s take the pain their company caused, pay for it with interest, compounded by the second. It takes heart and courage to do the right thing. That’s the level where the best compete – at the level of personal values, meaning, emotion and story. That level is the level of world class accountability.