Best Practices in Customer Service Part Six. Customer Problems and Problem Customers Service Recovery: Turning Oops! Into Opportunity, Ron Zemke No company satisfies all of its customers all of the time. But how a company handles complaints makes a big difference in its ability to retain current customers and attract new customers, which makes a big difference in its profitability. This article focuses on recovery, on how you can keep customers after you've failed to meet their expectations -- and leverage what you learn from their complaints into ways to improve the quality of your products and service. E-mail: zemke@aol.com Cooling the Customer With HEAT, John Hartley When a customer has a problem, your company has a problem. How do you handle customer problems? A survey has shown that 68% of customers who leave a company for a competitor do so because of an attitude of indifference on the part of a company employee. The simple, four-step approach advocated in this article can guide your employees and help you keep your customers. John Hartley is a development coach with Promus Hotel Corporation in Tampa, Florida, ranked number one in the hotel industry in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, published by the University of Michigan School of Business and the American Society for Quality. John has spent 23 years in various customer service capacities, following eight years in the U.S. Army Security Agency. E-mail: jhartley@promus.com Web site: http://www.promus-inc.com Return to Best Practices in Customer Service page