Service Recovery Paradox

April 15, 2008 in observations, patterns

There’s an odd relationship between service recovery and customer loyalty from the Customer Experience Labs blog:

The “service recovery paradox” states that with a highly effective service recovery, a service or product failure offers a chance to achieve higher satisfaction ratings from customers than if the failure had never happened. A little bit less academically, this means that a good recovery can turn angry and frustrated customers into loyal customers. In fact it can create even more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.

I came across a blog entry a couple weeks ago by a former waiter who recognized this paradox and routinely capitalized on it by alerting his customers to mistakes they hadn’t even noticed (after the mistakes were corrected) as a reliable way to boost his tip.

[via choosenick]