Mistakes are to be expected, but knowing how to recover an angry or frustrated customer into a loyal customer is a learned art. A Customer Focused Attitude is critical for successful service recovery. Employees need to be trained to anticipate and identify potential problems, as well as have the experience to make decisions and to deliver skillful solutions to customer problems.
All customer problems are opportunities to win over their loyalty. This weekend I was in a large home improvement store looking for a certain product. When I went to checkout, I asked the associate who was scanning my purchases if they carried this particular product. There were two additional associates standing around as I asked my question. Two of the associates told me what isle to look on to see "if" they had the product at all. I then asked if they could look in their system and verify whether or not the store carried this item. The same two associates quickly said no, they couldn't do that, and I would need to go look down the isle. The 3rd associate interrupted them both and said that she could check the system and let me know if they had the product. She left the register, took both of the associates with her, looked up the product and came back to me and told me they did not carry what I was looking for. She apologized and thanked me for waiting. I sure hope the two associates with her learned something about customer focused service. Attention and awareness can eliminate most issues.