3 Things You Need to Know About Service Recovery Paradox

Joe Sejean, CEO and Founder of Activate Experience, writes about ways to make failure your best asset to build customers’ loyalty, as he explains the Service Recovery Paradox.

I have recently subscribed to one-year hosting with SiteGround.com for a blog. I was all excited to start the birth of my new online adventure. But when I pressed the button “Publish” to put my blog online, it didn’t work: my blog web address displayed an error page.

Following the process of solving this issue with the Support team, I was struck with the power of the Service Recovery Paradox.

What does the Service Recovery Paradox say?

That a well recovered service failure brings more loyalty than a constant good service without failure. In other words, failure can become one of your best asset to build customers’ loyalty.

These are 3 things you should know about Service Recovery Paradox:

1. Mistakes Are Disguised Opportunities…

…to Create a Connection with Your Customers

The first thing I did when my web page did not show after publishing it from SiteGround was to contact them through their chat support. This is the first opportunity: mistakes open a space for a conversation with your Guests and Customers. Without this mistake, I wouldn’t have established any connection with SiteGround team.

…to Fine Tune Your Service
 

Mistakes give you a chance to see where you need to improve. The issue I had with my blog publication gave SiteGround’s team a chance to see what was failing. When the feedback comes from a Guest or a Customer complaint, it is real. Your business might be great, your processes incredible, your service amazing. But if your Guests or Customers don’t perceive it this way, use their feedback to re-assess the situation and work to improve.

2. Exceeding expectations in the service recovery brings greater loyalty than constant good service.

This is the essence of the Service Recovery Paradox. The element to have in mind is that loyalty becomes stronger only if the recovery exceeds your expectations: If a service recovery consists of bringing back things to normal, the mistake will remain a stain in the relationship because, in the end, you just got back to what was supposed to happen normally from the start.

If the resolution exceeds your expectations it means your service provider: #1- solved your issue and #2 – considered it needed to be solved beyond what was normally delivered.

In my experience with SiteGround, the two team members with whom I interacted have exceeded my expectations in:

Speed: I hardly had the time to realize there was an issue with my blog publication that a ticket was opened automatically on my behalf. A couple of minutes after, I received a personalized update message from Miroslav, a support technician. I had additional questions and decided to use the chat support. I was connected to Victoria less than 10 seconds after I started to queue. Finally, my blog was published less than 2 hours after the problem occurred.

Commitment: Miroslav informed me with a second message that everything was solved, giving me all the links I needed to move ahead with my blog without losing time. He was committed to have my blog published asap and it felt good.

Transparency: My questions to Victoria were pretty simple. One of them attracted her attention. She told me she was pretty sure of the answer but she made me wait a couple of minutes to cross check with a colleague “to be 100% sure”. I tend to like it when people answer me “I don’t know” or “I am not sure” and yet strive to find the answer to my question. It shows a genuine transparency that builds immediate trust.

The result speaks for itself: I rated Victoria and Miroslav 5 starts each; I have been recommending SiteGround to all the bloggers I have been talking to and I am currently writing a post using them as a reference. Pretty good outcome for a relationship that started with a failure. 

When facing customer complaints, do not think of fixing the problem to go back to normal: focus on understanding how you will exceed expectations through your recovery.

3. The Service Recovery Paradox Can’t Sustain on Its Own to Strengthen Loyalty

There are two main reasons to that:

Great service recovery without a great service in normal times is an empty shell. Who cares of having a great service recovery if, outside of mistakes and failures, the experience is always average or bad? No one – I believe. Be adamant at providing a great experience as a top priority. Otherwise great service recovery is vain. 

Loyalty comes primarily with satisfaction over time, great service recovery only makes loyalty stronger. The loyalty of your readers, your clients, your guests will be the result of a persistent caring relationship over time. It is true, incidents well recovered along the way will reinforce their loyalty but that’s about it.