A Case Study in Customer Service

The Walt Disney Company is one of the most well known examples of a company succeeding in large measure by applying the principles of customer advocacy and "service recovery"—principles that have become an integral part of Disney’s operations.

Prior to starting his own company, Integrated Loyalty Systems, Jake Poore spent close to 20 years in customer service working on service recovery for the Walt Disney Company in Orlando and Paris entertaining 25-35 million people a year.

According to Jake, "everyone makes mistakes, that's human. But how do you solicit those mistakes and rectify them so that the story is now possibly better than if there were no mistake at all?"

He goes on to explain that "uneventful does not create loyalty, and does not drive return visits or intent to refer new business…. So, how do you find your mistakes?"

Perhaps the worst outcome of all is a situation where mistakes aren't noticed and customers who experience poor service simply walk away without complaining and with no intention to return.

Jake points out that almost 70% of unhappy customers who decide to leave your business don't write letters of complaint. Finding and/or soliciting complaints by being proactive is the key—according to Poore, it's an art.

Finding customers who have complaints (legitimate or exaggerated) provides the best opportunity to fix the problem, retain loyalty and maintain satisfaction. Positive stories about bad experiences are just as important, and occasionally far more important, than positive stories about good experiences—the latter are expected while the former are impressive, more memorable and more likely to get repeated.

"If your customer goes home mad," Jake explains, "it is not only too late, but they will tell many people THEIR STORY." But if you can catch them and correct the error, "now they’re possibly telling YOUR STORY!"

Jake Poore was so successful at customer service while at Disney he went on to start his own company and is now President and Founder of Integrated Loyalty Systems, a consulting firm specializing in service development, process improvement, leadership training and service excellence.

*Source of Jake Poore Quotes
www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/03/apology_101_1.html

Learn about customer advocacy and why a proactive approach to customer issues is important to any business.

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