Picture this: I poured an ice cold glass of almond milk from the fridge. I raised the glass of creamy liquid to my mouth. Ugh! This almond milk tasted odd. I checked the expiry date on the bottle. It wasn’t even close to its sell-by date.
I was perplexed. My husband and I love Califia Farms almond milk. If you tried almond milk before and didn’t like it – this brand will totally change your mind. It even made a convert out of my husband, who doesn’t even enjoy drinking regular milk. He now drinks Califia’s almond milk nearly every night.
For all the many almond milk we’ve consumed, we’d never had a funky tasting bottle before now. I looked up the website for Califia Farms and sent them an email. In less than one hour, I had a reply. Awesome! I explained that we are regular buyers of their product and had gotten a bad tasting bottle.
Their reply was terrific, here’s why:
1. They replied quickly!
2. They said sorry first.
3. They wanted to make things right. (They sent us coupons for a replacement bottle.)
I sent back an email or two to explain the store we buy from, explained that the bottle seal was intact, and provided the code on the bottle. Each email exchange was so refreshing; it sounded like a real human wrote it (no robot sounding templates) and the response was truly empathetic. Rare indeed.
We were already advocates of this product and company –now we can tell others about their first class customer service in addition to our rave reviews of their delicious products.
This illustrates the model of how to handle customer issues – reply quickly, honestly, empathetically and make things right.
Check out your customer recovery plans. Can customers get this kind of help from your company? Are there policies that get in the way? Make sure you have a recovery plan that delights customers. If you use these elements when issue occur, you can grow positive word of mouth and inspire more engagement than before the issue occurred.
What’s your great recovery story?
