The Service Double Whammy

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN FREESPACE IN THE SUN

Right: The magnificent PETRONAS Twin Towers: Can our service levels reach high?

My first piece on Freespace, back in the middle of 2006, talked about customer service, or the lack of it in Malaysia. It is now Visit Malaysia Year 2007, and I sure hope that people in the service industry have taken appropriate measures to up their service levels.

But I’m not going to preach the importance of the service quality. Instead, I will detail two separate incidents; one that happened in front of me, and the other I overheard at a Starbucks near my place of work.

In my piece True Towering Malaysians on Freespace last month, I told the story of the dinner honouring Malaysia’s best humanitarians. On that same night, I witnessed a waiter spilling coffee on a foreign guest, just one table away from the Prime Minister.

I was at the rostrum, and from about 15 metres I watched how the offending waiter kept wiping the spilled coffee off the guest’s jacket. The guest, still in shock, was trying to understand I’m sure what had happened and what the panicking waiter was up to.

So I quickly summoned one of the ballroom captains, who was merely looking on at the whole incident, and I said, “Can you please go over there and apologise to the guest, and offer to get his jacket dry-cleaned? The guy is practically being beaten up there!”

The captain did as I suggested, and the waiter stopped “beating” the guest. I’m not sure if my attempt at what marketers call “service recovery” worked, but the opportunity was there to be seized.

Right, that was the first incident.

The Starbucks incident wasn’t so much a coffee-spilling incident, but a true record of how service recovery came into play.

As I do almost every morning, I order my caramel hot chocolate from the outlet. As I waited for my order on morning earlier this year, I saw a barista (a Starbucks crew) chatting with a male customer also waiting for his order. There is nothing unusual here; this scenario is witnessed in almost every Starbucks outlets I have been to.

After the customer left, another barista came in and said to the first barista that he seemed particularly close to the customer.

“You see, we have a history, the customer and I…” he said.

“History?” asked his co-worker.

“Yup. A few months ago I spilled coffee on the man’s wife!” he replied.

The guys spills coffee on a man’s wife and yet there they were, chatting away happily. I guarantee you that some form of service recovery occurred following the coffee spill that helped the customer decide that the incident was an honest mistake, and that he would still patronise Starbucks.

For Starbucks, it’s a customer retained, and in these days of cut-throat competition, a customer retained could be the difference between opening a new outlet and closing an existing one.

If you are in the service industry, have you ever been presented with such service recovery opportunities? Be honest. Have you never got an order wrong? Did the dry-cleaning get damaged by an under-trained staff? Did the defects in the house you built shout louder than the house itself?

The bigger question is, did you seize the opportunity?

Remember that the customer is king, and just like a friend, losing them is much easier than making them. Making them feel appreciated and letting them know that their patronage means a lot to you will not kill you. It will benefit you.

Keep your customers well. Your biggest failing may not necessarily the service error you make, but perhaps the failure to exercise service recovery; the classic Double Whammy.

Good luck Malaysia.