Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Customer Service Recovery in Singapore


Recently, Nano, a popular restaurant in Singapore was put in the media spotlight when local celebrity, Joanne Peh complained about the bad service to her 20,000 Twitter followers.

Customer satisfaction is crucial to the survival of any business especially in a small country like Singapore where news spread quickly and widely like wildfire. The consequence is dire as it erodes the patronage of the service provider.

It is faster to lose existing and potenial customers than to get new customers. Just one complaint can spread to thousands via social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and internet forums. These dissatisfied customers are likely to engage in negative word of mouth communication that can bleed the service provider of its business. A study found that a dissatisfied customer may relate his bad experience to 10 to 20 other people. The end result would be lost sales and profits. So it is important to manage customers' complaints. Thus it is important for service providers to have an effective service recovery strategy.

What is service recovery?

A service recovery is the action taken by the service provider to seek out customers dissatifaction and respond to the poor service quality in order to reduce the damage and to pacify the dissastified customer.

Service failures are unavoidable but they lead to customer dissatisfaction. The breakdown in relationship and misunderstanding can contribute to customer complaints. Once a service failure occurs, it is crucial that organizations focus on salvaging their loyal customers through carrying out a better service to the customers.

An effective service well recovered can lead to a higher satisfaction. Consumers who receive fair service recovery are more likely to repatronize the service provider and even engage in positive word of mouth advertising, thus spreading goodwill for the service provider.

Customer loyalty is important to the long term survival of the service provider as loyal customers generally are more profitable than new customer. They bring repeated businesses, they make good ambassadors and they bring in new customers. It is reported that a service company could boost profits by 100 percent just by increasing customer retention rate by 5 percent. A satisfactory service recovery has a strong impact on customer loyalty.

Many organisations in Singapore recognise the importance of making right their wrong service ways that they have include customer satisfaction as a key performance target.

One should read customers complaints with an open and appreciative mind as these feedbacks provide an opportunity to fix problems and improve on its service, thus preventing them from re-occurring and improve customer satisfaction.

It is good to review the company's service recovery policy and procedures to ensure every upset customer becomes a happy customer.
Ram is a Coach, actor, speaker, trainer and author. For more info check out
http://www.2be3consultancy.com

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