A letter you never sent

0
30

Share on LinkedIn

Dear Customer:

Thank you for your recent feedback.  We always enjoy taking the time to better understand where we fall short of expectations as it offers us the opportunity to do something we love to do:  Improve how we serve our Customers.  As such, your insights and thoughts are incredibly valuable to us.

Incidentally, although it may seem counter-intuitive, we’re also grateful that you’ve told us explicitly that you’re “never going to buy anything from [our] terrible company again.”  While we regret to see you go, by making it abundantly clear (from that statement as well as the other quite colorful things you had to share with us in your letter) that we’ve lost you “forever” as a Customer, you’ve actually saved us resources and energy in attempting to make things right for you in particular with this specific situation.  Since, thanks to your telling us so unequivocally, we know there’s “no way on this green Earth or the entire Universe” that you’ll “ever spend another red cent” on our products, our Customer service and support teams can better concentrate their limited resources and time on other priorities—and our remaining Customers—instead.

So again, thank you especially for saving us those resources.

Furthermore, and quite helpfully, the specific problem you brought to our attention highlighted an issue that we discovered is bothering a lot of our (otherwise, still existing) Customers.  Being so dedicated to our (again, existing) Customers’ satisfaction, we very quickly went to work and not only fixed that problem in our processes, but made the entire experience even better!

In fact, this improvement we’ve made to our system won’t simply make things better for those Customers we still have.  In fact, it actually saved us money as we uncovered not only these things that are aggravating from a Customer’s perspective, but also inefficient and wasteful of our own resources, time, and money in and of themselves.  It’s a win-win!  As a result of these improvements, we’ve been able to pass along these savings to our enduring Customers by way of issuing them a 25% voucher when they return to buy from us again.  Come to think of it, since it won’t be necessary to extend this goodwill gesture to you (since you’re no longer a Customer, and according to your decision never again will be no matter what we do), you’ve saved us even more money!

Of course, the irony here is that we also recognize that none of this would have been possible were it not for your—vivid—note to us calling our attention to our initial failing.  So, as a token of our appreciation, please find enclosed a $20 gift card for Starbucks.  There’s likely a location near your home where you can take it to enjoy a drink or snack.  You see, we hold a weekly contest here for our front-line team members to come up with thoughts on improving our Customers’ experiences…this is the usual prize we award to the best idea.  We hope you enjoy it because with your efforts you certainly earned it!

Thanks again, and have a wonderful day!

Mgmt

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Nicholas Zeisler, CCXP, LSSBB
I’m a Customer Experience executive, certified Process Improvement professional, Agile Scrum Master, dynamic educator, change management strategist, and in-demand business and leadership coach. I've worked from the inside and from the outside; in organizations large and small; public sector and private; from oil and gas to technology to non-profit (with lots in between too). I've seen a lot, but I haven't seen it all.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here