Oh No! The Air Conditioner Broke!

That's right. It's 90+ degrees out and the air conditioner in our office building broke yesterday and it's still broke today! It's about 85 degrees in my office right now and there is no air movement at all. It got me thinking about customer service and how we treat customers when something unexpected happens. You see, we are customer's of the landlord for the building and the service we have contracted for is not currently being offered. Now it's not their fault the air conditioning broke. But the question is, what is the response to the customer when something goes wrong.

In this case, the response is we just have to suffer until the repairman can work us into the schedule. I'm wondering how much trouble it would be to bring some fans downstairs and offer to set a few of them up to move some air around and maybe cool things at least a few degrees. Or, how about coming around with an update and a cooler of ice cold drinks or maybe even set up an ice cream sundae bar and make all the tenants an ice cream sundae, get everyone laughing about it a little and creating a sense of community? All these seem like pretty easy and low cost things to do and would buy a lot of goodwill.

Think about that for your own business. How do you react when something doesn't go right for your customers. Do you take a look at the situation and find a way to build goodwill with your customers? It's amazing what impact just a small effort can have on our customer satisfaction and retention. Whenever something goes wrong in your service delivery you obviously need to fix it as quickly as possible, but also look for ways to build satisfaction with your customers by letting them know you care and adding a few unexpected surprises along the way. I'd be interested in hearing what you do when something like this happens. Let me know.