Life has its little annoyances, but few bother me more than The Cliché. Of course, every office has that one person who has a trite expression for every circumstance (“Hey! Working hard or hardly working?”), but that’s a whole other blog post. Today I’d like to muse about one of those times when I must admit that a cliché is absolutely true:

Problems can be opportunities.

There is no arena in which this resounds more than Customer Service. And of course, no matter what your business is, it is likely that you have customers. Every day presents an opportunity to make them happy. Bear this in mind: Every problem presents an opportunity to blow them away with great service. The recovery is far more important than the mistake.

Here’s a small example. I once made an error with a customer (it happens) by promising them a phone call from a higher-up in my company, and then failing to communicate this to said higher up. The customer actually had to get back in touch with me to follow up and see why no one had called! I did two things: sent a genuine apology and promised to make it right. I didn’t make it right, though---I made it better than right. I asked my superior to get his superior (a celebrity and heavy-hitter in business) in on this, which he did, and together they made contact, on a Saturday, and basically showed this customer that she mattered. She saw how we hustled, and she ended up much happier than if I had never made the mistake in the first place.

People expect to be made happy and get what they paid for; it should be the baseline level of service in any organization. Being blown away by great service, however, is different and this is what makes people remember you and tell others about you. Since a happy customer may tell one or two people about their experience and an UNhappy customer will tell an average of ten people, this tells me that we need a new statistic on what happens to those who experience great service in the form of recovery from a mistake or problem. I’ll bet they tell more than one or two people about you.

Since we’re sharing…fair is fair and I’ve told you MY mistake…tell us your great service story! Whether you were the customer or the service provider, we want to hear all about it.