One of the things we always encourage our clients to do is consistently solicit feedback from your customers. It’s so important to really know what people are experiencing in your center. Remember that we used to tell 2 friends who told 2 friends and so on, and now with social media we tell 200 (or maybe it’s 2,000. I have 508 friends and feel like I live in a small world!). You certainly don’t want to be the last to know when there was a problem in your center.
Every group, every birthday party, every restaurant diner, bowler (get the picture) should be asked to fill out a comment card about their experience. Now comes the hard part, what are you going to do with that information?
I recently had a negative customer service moment at Office Depot, which usually is one of my favorite places to shop. They solicit feedback on their receipts and after stewing about the situation for a week I decided to share my feedback on their online survey. The survey was quick and easy (a must!) and I checked the box that they could email me for more information.
Less than 30 minutes after I submitted my survey, their store manager had gotten the feedback and sent me an email about it. WOW! Talk about impressive. I’ve given feedback a hundred times in this survey or that and have never been contacted afterwards. The fact that the manager contacted me at all was startling, much less the world class timeliness. She quickly apologized for my bad experience, explained that was not the way they ran things in their store and asked for more specifics so that she could understand the situation better.
I responded with the details and she returned, thanking me again for my terrific feedback, apologized again, and offered to send me a small gift card in the mail for my trouble. It was enough that she took the time to address my concerns at all, so when she sent me a gift, I was elated. She was able to turn the experience around completely. Now the story I tell you today is NOT the detail of the bad experience, but what great management and response time can do for your center’s ability to turn bad service into great service!
We are human, and we are going to make mistakes that will earn us some tough feedback sometimes. It is up to us whether we are going to be remembered for the mistake or for the lengths we’ll go to in order to correct it. What will you do?
Have you had some feedback that you were able to turn around to something positive? We would love to know how you’re handling that ever-essential feedback!
