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Is It Me Or Is This A Rip-Off?

Every business today not only encourages their customers to recommend product/service to friends
 and family, businesses today;

  • measure likelihood to recommend (net promoter score) periodically 
  • reward customers who recommend products/services
  • give discounts to referred customers
So what now is the issue?

A friend of mine shared this poor service experience on Instagram and thought it was a great share plus a good topic for discussions on talk to deBBie this Saturday.

It is expected that when you offer a great product or service, your customer is highly likely to tell 9 other people so they too can enjoy the product/service especially people that have similar interests. When these prospects come to your business location, they are looking to have the same experience they heard about and anything short of that can negatively impact your likelihood of acquiring up to 25 new customers.

The friend in question had heard so much about the House Cafe's chicken, bacon and avocado pizza and decided to try it out. Unfortunately, they didn't meet her expectation and here's where it gets interesting after she complains. See screenshots below



My 2 Cents

In summary, there was no value for money and her feedback/complaint not taken seriously. Being in business is serious business and its one of the things I talk about in my new book; Seriously, How Is Business?

It is not enough to give great customer service. Can you sustain the standards you have set? Can everyone in your organization be on the same page about your value proposition and customer expectations? Can every customer that patronizes you tell the same story?

In my recent customer experience diagnostic projects, 50% of new customers were acquired via word of mouth (WOM) i.e. they heard about my clients' product/service from their customers so I guess it is safe to assume that House Cafe largely acquires new customers via WOM.  

If you know that your customers are talking about how great your product/service is, it is important you understand why they think it is great, check that your value proposition aligns with their overall experience and then feed those expectations into your operations, technology, training , employee engagement so that your service (PROMISE) standards can be sustained. If you have to reduce those standards to stay in business, your customers have a right to know what is changing and also let them know how you intend to sustain the quality and value for money they are used to.

There will definitely be service failures but what's important is that you fix the problem (take a clue from the Lounge Thirty8 Story  (read comment section - Fortune's comment). 

Have a good one! 

PS: Please forgive the typos (if any)


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