How Making Mistakes Increases Customer Loyalty

No one likes to make mistakes. I would bet the last thing in the world you want to do is make a mistake. At the same time I’ll also bet that you make mistakes. In fact, I would say you probably make mistakes on a fairly regular basis.

Today’s video is all about the secrets of mistakes and why they might be the best customer retention tool you’ll ever get.

Transcript

You know, no one likes to make mistakes, and I would bet the last thing in the world you wanna do is make a mistake. At the same time, I’m also gonna bet that you make mistakes. In fact, I bet you make lots of mistakes. In fact, I would say you probably make mistakes on a really regular basis.

You know today’s video is all about the secrets and mistakes, and why they might be the best customer retention tool you’ll ever get, and I’m gonna tell you four stories. Three are how mistakes become a great retention tool, and the other one is how to make sure your customers never, never, never visit your business again.

So let’s start with how to make sure your customers never visit your business again.

• So, I was out to dinner. I was out to dinner with my wife and my daughter. It was her birthday. This was a long time ago, probably nine, 10 years ago, and it was her birthday. She was really excited about going to this restaurant for dinner, so we walk in and we had eaten in this restaurant many, many, many times. We walked in, we were seated, the waitress came over and took our order, and 20 minutes goes by, then 25 minutes goes by, and then we finally get to 45 minutes, and I go to the waitress saying, “Where’s our food?” And she was very snippy with me, and she said, “Well, you know the kitchen is busy and blah blah blah blah blah.” Well the truth was the food had been sitting there and it got cold, so when she brought the food out, it was cold, and she said, “This is gonna be the best meal you’ve ever had” in a really snippy manner. And the truth was, it was one of the worst meals we ever had. So I told her about it and she could care less. Now the owner of the restaurant I know was a chef. It was a chef owned restaurant. He was in the kitchen. I had never talked to the chef before, but I was really, really annoyed. In fact I was so annoyed, I wrote the owner of the restaurant a letter saying how unhappy we were with the service, and with he food, and the fact that we’d been there lots of times before. Well, he never bothered to respond. And because he never bothered to respond, I will never, never, never go to that restaurant again, and we haven’t gone to that restaurant again. Now we used to probably spend, you know, a thousand, maybe $1,200 dollars a year in this restaurant ’cause we went there on a fairly regular basis. Over the last 10 years, what that means, that means he’s lost probably 12, $15,000 worth of business from us. Does he care? I have no idea, nor do I really care, but the truth was because he didn’t handle the mistake well, he lost a good customer. Is that something you wanna have happen?

Now let’s turn around and talk about three stories, and I’m gonna tell ’em relatively quickly, about how they maintain my customer loyalty forever.

1. The first was a sports shop where I used to buy my ski equipment and tennis equipment, and we spent a fair amount of money over there. This was probably 15 years ago now, and I was, had some tennis racquets there. In fact I had three tennis racquets there. They were all my tennis racquets. They were supposed to be strung. Well they were supposed to be done in done day, so I walked back the next day, they weren’t done. They said come back tomorrow and they’ll be done. I walked back the next day and they weren’t done. They said well come back at 3 o’clock and they’ll be done. Well I came back at 3 o’clock and they weren’t done, and frankly I kinda blew a gasket, ’cause I was really, really annoyed. Now it wasn’t that I was playing tennis that night, but I had taken three trips to the store to get something that was supposed be done that wasn’t done. Well, had not happened, what next, I woulda never bought anything from this place again, but the next morning at 8:00 a.m., in walks the owner of the business into my business with my three strung racquets which he gave me on the house, profusely apologized for doing that. And what happened, well they probably got about 50 or $60,000 worth of business from us since that period of time because they did the thing right.
2. Now a second story is about another restaurant story, and this is a story that happened, oh probably 35, 36 years ago. It was right after my wife and I had first gotten married. We liked this restaurant. It was about a half an hour from where we lived. We were there, and we walked in, we’re seated, and again I had a waiter from hell. It was one of the worst waiting jobs in the world, and there was this guy walking around, and I thought he was the manager of the place. I didn’t realize it was the owner. Well I call him over, and I said, “You know something, this waiter is absolutely horrendous, can you do something about it?” Well, he told the waiter to go away. He took over waiting on the table. He tried to comp us our meal. He gave us a whole bunch of swag from the restaurant that he would not take back, and the truth is, we’ve been eating this restaurant for 36 years now. My daughter got married there. We went on a trip with them to Italy. All those things happened because of taking care of a mistake in the best way possible. They gained our loyalty, and we’ve actually become pretty good friends with hem over the years.
3. Now the third story is about a software company. Now one of our businesses is based on a platform called HubSpot, and HubSpot’s a very large company, and they went to what’s called two step authorization. Well I was doing it through an app, and I changed my phone. The app got wiped out, and when I tried to log back into the website, our website when I was trying to get our newsletter out, this one that you’re probably looking at right now, it was because, and I couldn’t do there, and then I called their customer support and they said, “Oh by the way, we can’t get in there in 48 hours.” Well my newsletter was supposed to go out the next day, and I was really, really annoyed that they couldn’t get it taken care of. So I happened to have the CEO’s email address. I sent him an email, and this was on Sunday afternoon around six o’clock, and I sent him the email saying I’m really annoyed. How the heck can you guys do this and lock out your customers and not have a way to solve that? Well half an hour later I get an email back from him copying his chief operating officer. Now I’m a very small customer, and this is a multi-billion dollar company. It’s called HubSpot. And the next day at nine o’clock, the COO had taken care of my problem and emailed me back. Now what do you think that does with my loyalty towards that particular company?

So there you have it. You have three stories about mistakes, and they took lemons and they made lemonade out of it. Oh that’s a stupid thing, it really was true. They have gotten my loyalty because of the way they handled mistakes. So although none of us like to have mistakes, none of us wanna make mistakes, but when we do make a mistake, what is it? It’s an opportunity, and that’s an opportunity that you might be missing.

So why don’t you scroll down and leave me a comment below. And while you’re at it, DOWNLOAD our Free infographic about how you can become Financially Free from your business.

Hey, this is Josh Patrick, you’re at the Sustainable Business. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.