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Resourceful Recovery – Part 1
By Terrel Transtrum and David Taylor
No company satisfies all of its field reps all of the time. But how a company handles complaints makes a big difference in its ability to retain current field reps and attracts new business, which makes a big difference in profitability. This series of articles focuses on recovery, on how you can keep field reps after you've failed to meet their expectations-and leverage what you learn from their complaints into ways to improve the quality of your products and services.
The true test of an organization's commitment to service quality is the way the organization responds when things go wrong for the customer and field reps. Resourceful recovery is about keeping customers coming back and keeping field reps loyal after the worst, or at least something very annoying, has happened. In simple terms, it's the special effort those in the field expect you to put forth when things have gone wrong for them.
Effective recovery saves "at-risk" field reps for the organization and becomes a hallmark, a way to distinguish the organization from competition and set it up as a standard for the industry. It's a planned, systematic process that includes the following:
- A problem resolution process
- A complaint and problem capture-and-analysis subsystem
- A way of feeding back information on systematic problems
A growing body of data suggests that companies performing high-quality service recovery for field reps can realize substantial economic payoff. According to John Goodman, president of Technical Assistance Research Programs, Inc. (TARP), a Washington, D.C., research and consulting organization specializing in customer service research, at least three studies have found that customers who complain and have their complaints quickly satisfied are more likely to purchase additional products than are customers who've experienced no problems with the organization or with its products.
The impact of poor recovery goes beyond the disappointment and loss of a single field rep. The field service rep who dismisses an unhappy or complaining field rep with a perfunctory "I can't help you, that's our policy" positions the company to lose dozens if not hundreds of current and potential field reps and their customers. The problem is that the complaining field rep who's summarily dismissed doesn't simply go away. He or she takes every opportunity to tell anyone who will listen what rotten treatment he or she was made to endure at the hands of your company.
(The content of this article is extracted from ServiceQuest® RetentionSmarts™ Modules. Click here for more information on RetentionSmarts™ training and mentoring systems.)
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