Time to Read – 90 seconds
What Alison Knew, that Blackberry didn’t, is that when something goes wrong for a customer, it is time to communicate, and some.
Moments of Truth is the name given to an award winning customer initiative by Ford Retail, led by John Leathem, Customer Relations Director, described as:
There are some specific points during a customer’s
experience where we are judged and where we have to
stand up and be counted. We call these Moments of Truth.
Every month people are nominated for awards, and a recent one caught my eye- Alison Sutcliffe, Dealership Secretary, Bradford, applied the Moment of Truth – HEAT (Hear, Empathise, Apologise, Take Ownership) principle to deal with a complaint effectively:
“Despite a customer complaint belonging to another dealership, Alison took ownership.
She kept in contact with the customer and liaised with the Barnsley dealership to ensure the customer went away satisfied. She kept her promises; always calling the customer back to keep them updated. I think she went the extra mile as she could have easily
passed this complaint back.”
If only Blackberry had applied these same principles when their customers experienced major disruption across the world last week.
What Alison knew that Blackberry have hopefully learned is that customers want to know what is happening and be kept up to date – communicated with – on when the problem will be fixed.
Yes, the Blackberry problem affected millions, and Alison had just one customer. But Blackberry has a major Public Relations machine and open access to the 24 hour, Omni present media – TV, Twitter, Facebook and the rest, through whom they could have kept in contact with every single customer.
Customers are unhappy when things go wrong, they are even unhappier at being ignored.
David
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