Humility Is a Great Customer Service Strategy
How many times have you had to listen to explanation upon explanation as to why you received a poor customer experience? My guess is more times than you have heard, “Sorry, we made a mistake”. Until companies are run by robots, there will always be mistakes. Simple mistakes can be costly to a business, but mistakes that cost you a customer can be a permanent loss of future revenue, let alone the damage to your reputation should the customer create a YouTube video or publish a tweet to their 20,000 followers.
Social media has only enhanced the need for humility. For example, look at the humility shown by Domino’s Pizza in their new ad campaign that uses traditional media, YouTube, and Twitter to win back customers. They have the CEO admitting that their pizza was not good, with screenshots of tweets that claim “Domino’s pizza tastes like cardboard”. I have no empirical data as to the results of this “humility” campaign, but I can say that I have ordered a Domino’s pizza because of it. Let’s be honest, being from Chicago, Domino’s can’t compare to Lou Malnati’s and Gino’s East, but for $5.99 you’ll be happy with it.
It would be interesting to see how Domino’s is leveraging technology to improve the customer experience and the role it played in admitting to their faults. Unfortunately we cannot program a “humility” module into our software. However, an effective customer experience platform can help you identify the customers that need to hear “sorry”. With that first step, you have a great customer service strategy.
