Customer Service Recovery: Apologizing To Customers Without Alienating Employees

Customer service recovery is the ability to recover from a mishap with a client, to recover so successfully that you actually may improve relations with that client.  This involves several steps which I'll recap here briefly. 1. Apologize and ask for forgiveness: A real apology, not a fakey fake “I’m sorry if you feel that way.” 2. Review the complaint with your customer: turn your customers, in other words, into your customer service consultants, letting them explain what’s gone wrong in the customer experience in the customer’s view and what you should do to fix it. 3. Fix the problem and then follow up: Either fix the issue in the next twenty minutes or follow up within twenty minutes to check on the customer and explain the progress you have made. Follow up after fixing things as well, to show continuing concern and appreciation. 4. Document the problem in detail to allow you to permanently fix the defect by identifying trends.