People with good intentions make promises. People with good character keep them! Be more concerned about your character than with your reputation. You express the truth of your character with the choice of your actions.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you meant what you promised.” Promises are worse than lies! Don’t commit what you can?t or won?t deliver! Telling someone that you absolutely will ?..is a promise you make. It creates hope for the receiver of this message! If you fail to deliver, it not only makes you a liar, but it also destroys many relationships.
Sales = Profound Customer Service. I know there are times that someone at your organization will screw up! I get it! But, how you respond to that mistake is how you and your team will be defined! Follow these steps:
- Own up to the mistake. Take full responsibility without giving any excuses. Tell your account that you will get to the bottom of what happened and get back to them with a full report.
- Discuss with leadership that has the ability to make process changes. You don’t need to go to every member of the office staff and start to point fingers. You need to report to the decision makers the facts of what happened according to the account?s perception.
- Understand the exact area of your company?s process where this mistake took place. Also, understand the steps that your company has taken to make sure that it doesn?t happen again ? with this account and also with other accounts.
- Report back the details of what happened to the account that had the service failure. Also, let them know what measures your company has taken to ensure that it doesn?t reoccur.
- Ask for forgiveness and another chance. If you have a great relationship, most accounts will forgive a mistake, if it is infrequent.
Some accounts will drop off from referring, but only until the next company has a service failure. If I were you, I would make sure to revisit this account quarterly to check whether it?s my time to capture their referrals again.
by Cheryl Peltekis, RN ?The Solutionist?
