Sometimes the chance to impress our customers is done via effective recovery from a problem.
This week I had the opportunity to fly into the Phoenix airport and I was renting a car for my visit. For those of you not aware this is the really busy season at the Phoenix airport, college spring breakers and baseball spring training visitors cause some real crowding at the airport.
Anyway, I get through the rental counter and head down to get the car, there are 20-30 people standing there waiting to get a car, it turns out that the returned cars weren't coming in as fast as the new renters were arriving, a tough problem to manage.
Luckily the supervisor downstairs did several things right, every five minutes he explained the problem to the assembled crowd, he apologized for the situation and explained what they were doing to get us our cars. Oh, I forgot, they also provided us all with free bottled water while we waited.
Once my name was called I then discovered they were offering all of us upgrades at no cost to a higher level car. This was great handling of a frustrating situation. Communicate, apologize, state your actions and compensate for the incovenience, all done sincerely.
My kudo's go out to Enterprise Rental Car in Phoenix. Does your business maximum your service recovery opportunities?
Hello!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. I would like to add: having a Knowledge Base program can help your employees and your customers. It may also be something that the competition has never considered.
Being in the restaurant business I can relate to customer service problems.A freindly and sincere communication with the customer you find out what the problem is, apologizing and letting them know that you are willing to correct the problem and how you plan on doing just that. We usually comp the meal with gift certicates hoping to bring that customer back. If a customer goes away happy, they always come back.
ReplyDelete