Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back

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Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
Service
Recovery
That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
                                   It’s no secret. Consumers continue to scale back
                                   their spending. Many vow to dine out less. But very
In a tough economy, consumers      few will eliminate it altogether. After all, even the
                                   most frugal consumers want to go out and relax
are willing to ‘trade down’ on     from time-to-time.

                                   With this in mind, quick service and casual din-
their dining options, but not on   ing restaurants are poised to weather the tough
                                   economy quite well…if they make the most of ev-
their expectations. How can you    ery opportunity to serve the customer. They must
                                   strive to deliver exceptional customer experiences
                                   over and over again, and be prepared to recover
ensure the service you deliver     and retain the customer if they fall short.

keeps your customers coming        Remember, it’s how you recover from a bad experi-
                                   ence that determines if customers will appreciate
back?                              your efforts enough to return to (or even recom-
                                   mend) your establishment.
Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
Superior Customer Service and                                 Complaints can be viewed as op-
Recovery is Critical to Your Brand
                                                              portunities, but only if you can
Most restaurants encourage patronage through
promotions, yet miss the opportunity to build and             use the interaction to regain the
sustain relationships through customer service inter-
actions. This is especially true for opportunities stem-
ming from a negative customer experience.
                                                              loyalty of the guest, educate the
When it comes to controlling and protecting the               organization and take action to
brand there is a pervasive “service disconnect” be-
tween corporate—that typically oversees customer              prevent problems in the future.
service inquiries through phone, email, web—and
managers of store operations. This quite often results
in customer defection due to the lack of consistency
in how issues are handled.
                                                           When a guest has a problematic experience at one of
Think of your service delivery process as it exists        your locations, the recovery process must be well-de-
today. Do your corporate-based service representa-         fined and easily-executed to ensure a higher rate of
tives provide customers with a firm answer, definitive       success.
action, or resolution timeframe? Are your complaints
consistently and effectively routed in real time? If not,   Without a streamlined process in place, unacceptable
your process is probably serving to build customers’       delays occur. The customer registers a complaint ex-
frustration levels. You could be losing customers and      pecting rapid resolution. Instead, there is a significant
hurting your brand’s image.                                lag time between the initial interaction and when the
                                                           store manager reaches out to remedy the situation/
Some additional questions to think about:                  repair the relationship. When this takes more than a
                                                           day, it’s likely any attempts at recovery will be wasted.
   •    Is your customer service department truly
        well-equipped to address the problems re-          For survival-minded restaurants, service recovery
        ported by your guests?                             is a critical juncture for both the customer and the
                                                           brand. Remember – a guest’s experience at just one
                                                           of your restaurants forms their impression of your
   •    How does your customer service department
                                                           entire brand. This is especially critical in today’s so-
        communicate the issues to the field (and how
                                                           cial networking world where word-of-mouth has an
        long does it take)?
                                                           exponential reach through thousands of outlets and
                                                           online communities.
   •    How do they analyze issues and inform execu-
        tive management?                                   For these reasons, organizations must evaluate their
                                                           customer interaction capabilities and service process-
   •    How do you ensure that all of your locations       es to mitigate risk, build loyalty and gain the valuable
        respond consistently to issues and follow the      voice of the customer insights that drive a competi-
        proper procedures?                                 tive edge.

-2-                                                                                            ©2009 Astute Solutions
Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
•   Can you alert quality and legal
                                                                                     managers of critical or sensitive
                                                                                     issues immediately so they can
                                                                                     respond properly?

                                                                                 •   Can an executive look at a report,
                                                                                     from the customer service/custom-
                                                                                     er relationship department, and
                                                                                     quickly identify the locations that
                                                                                     have the most service complaints?

                                                                                 •   Can they identify the locations that
                                                                                     have had the highest success with
                                                                                     recent promotions?

  Customer service and recovery can be your competitive edge.                    •   Can a franchise owner or manager
  Choose a solution that will enable you to recover quickly, while                   be notified of a problem within
  helping you ‘Wow’ your customers.                                                  minutes of the customer calling
                                                                                     the corporate customer service
                                                                                     department?
  Great Service Recovery Keeps
                                                                     •   Can they report back to corporate the results of
  Customers Coming Back                                                  the action they took to recover that customer?

  Best-in-class restaurants view superior customer                   •   Do you have safeguards in place to avoid com-
  service and recovery programs as their key com-                        pensation and goodwill abuse?
  petitive advantage. Vital to the strength and integ-
  rity of their brand, they have well-defined policies                Only a small percentage of customers will take the
  and procedures that are easily executed. With the                  time to report their complaint (industry research
  right technology in place, these programs enable                   shows that only one percent to five percent of cus-
  contact center agents to effectively address issues                 tomer complaints are reported). But each of these
  reported by guests and to communicate the issues                   contacts is an opportunity. An effective service
  directly to the field in real-time. They are able to                recovery program can recover 90 percent of those
  analyze and understand issues, trends and needs                    customers that make contact.
  to guide business decisions, influence research and
  development, and enhance marketing programs                        And if you consider the word-of-mouth impact
  and in-store experiences.                                          (through social media connections, an angry cus-
                                                                     tomer can and will tell thousands), the importance
  Service recovery can be your key competitive ad-                   of recovery takes on a new dimension. For today’s
  vantage. When reviewing your customer recovery                     quick-service and casual dining restaurants, the
  program, it’s important to determine the effective-                 return on investment in quality customer service
  ness of your technologies and reporting capabili-                  and recovery is certain to translate into thousands
  ties. Consider these key questions:                                of dollars over the life of each customer.

©2009 Astute Solutions                                                                                                      -3-
Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
How Technology Can Help Keep
     Your Customers Coming Back
     Restaurants that serve hundreds or thousands of         Advanced customer service solutions can cre-
     patrons daily need customer service and contact         ate organization-wide advantages, such as:
     center technology solutions capable of:
                                                               • Mitigating risk and managing the multi-
       • Handling the distinct demands of guest, corpo-          tude of inquiries surrounding food aller-
         rate and franchisee relationships.                      gies, service-related problems and more.

       • Enabling contact center agents to respond to          • Streamlining operational processes by
         customer issues and needs in real-time.                 providing store managers, franchise own-
                                                                 ers, and corporate departments access to
       • Providing the organization with real-time ac-           vital company and product information,
         cess to actionable customer data.                       as well as critical customer interaction
                                                                 data.
     To gain a competitive edge, your software solution
     should not only help you recover quickly, it should       • Providing a help desk for managers— an-
     also help you ‘Wow’ your customers.                         swering, on average, 98 percent of their
                                                                 questions.

                                                               • Gaining real-time customer insights to
  Going from a Bad Experience to a                               make key changes to in-store operations,
                                                                 products, services and offerings for great-
‘WOW’ Experience One Step at a Time                              er efficiency, cost savings and increased
                                                                 customer satisfaction.
1.    A customer complaint is captured at the contact
      center as a recording and routed in real-time to       Investing in a customer service solution ca-
      the appropriate restaurant manager. The manager        pable of handling the distinct demands of
      has the benefit of listening to the feedback as the
                                                             guest, corporate and franchisee relationships is
      customer stated it, hearing all the details of their
      actual experience.                                     a major step toward strengthening your brand
                                                             and its longevity. It enables your restaurant to
2.    The manager can take action because they are           deliver best-in-class, differentiating service.
      provided the information they need to personally
      follow-up with the customer.                           Astute Solutions offers customer service and
3.    The customer is delighted with the unexpected
                                                             contact center software and services specifical-
                                                             ly designed for business-to-consumer environ-
      level of responsiveness they receive.
                                                             ments. These technologies provide representa-
4.    The restaurant manager can quickly update the          tives the right information at the right time.
      corporate office on the results of the interaction       They reduce the effort and guesswork involved
      through a Web form or an IVR system.                   in issue resolution, while eliminating lag time
5.    In the end, the store manager has established
                                                             and empowering agents to deliver ‘Wow’ ser-
                                                             vice that keep your customers coming back.
      goodwill with the customer, the company has
      gained valuable end-to end insight about the in-
      teraction and corporate has protected the brand.
                                                                                           ©2009 Astute Solutions
Service Recovery That Keeps Your Customers Coming Back
Keep Them Coming Back
“The casual-dining chain Olive Garden, coffee player Dunkin’ Donuts, pizza delivery leader Domino’s, and
 quick-service giant McDonald’s each topped their respective industry categories for customer loyalty in
         Brand Keys Inc. latest annual consumer survey.” —Nation’s Restaurant News, March, 2009.
             All four companies partner with Astute Solutions – leveraging its advanced
                         technology to deliver exceptional service every time.

                             Olive                     McDonald’s relies on
                             Garden                    Astute’s solutions to provide
                               partners with           improved data capture, ex-
                               Astute Solutions        pedited issue resolution and
                               to improve their        real-time reporting. Astute’s
ability to interact with customers and to fully        technology integrates the
utilize customer feedback. With Astute’s Pow-          company’s extensive restaurant
erCenter™ solution, Olive Garden improved the          data bases into a centralized location. And by inte-
response time and efficiency of contact center           grating Astute’s ePowerCenter™ system with their
agents, eliminating tedious manual fulfillment          existing CRM system, McDonald’s has the power to
and reporting processes, and increased the value       measure customer satisfaction results both from
of customer feedback to the organization. Now          the national level, right down to each individual
the company is able to quickly identify issues         restaurant location.
that impact customer satisfaction and also gain
insight that helps them to evaluate menu items
and promotions to deliver what their customers
want. These enhancements have not only mini-
mized the “service disconnect” from corporate
                                                         About Astute Solutions
to store locations, but ensures that Olive Garden        Through its award-winning contact center
is delivering exceptional customer service every         automation, customer relationship
time.                                                    management and knowledge management
                                                         solutions, Astute Solutions enables consumer-
                                                         focused companies to differentiate through
Dunkin’                                                  service excellence. Its ePowerCenter™ and
Brands                                                   RealDialog™ solutions solve day-to-day
embarked on an                                           interaction challenges and enable high quality
initiative to im-                                        customer experiences across all touch points.
prove interactions and enhance relationships             These solutions optimize operations through
with their customers and franchisees. With               immediate, actionable feedback, while
Astute Solutions’ technology they were able              meeting the complex technical requirements
to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of             of the enterprise. Astute Solutions’ restau-
customer service interactions, provide franchi-          rant industry customers include McDonald’s,
sees a single point of contact in the company,           Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, Domino’s,
and reduce the burden on field support. The               Brinker International, Burger King, Darden
ePowerCenter solution enables them to quantify           Restaurants, Buffets, Inc., and Dunkin’ Brands.
and identify franchisees’ real needs. These capa-
bilities are extended to the customer support
group, improving Dunkin’ Brands ability to serve
its customers and continually leverage customer
feedback.
                                                                               2400 Corporate Exchange Drive
                                                                                  Columbus, Ohio 43231 USA
                                                                                                877.769.3750
                                                                                    www.astutesolutions.com
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