Service Disruption + Poor Handling = Lost Customer

Service Disruption + Poor Handling = Lost Customer

The Wall Street Journal showed up in my driveway today. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, since I’m a long-time home delivery subscriber.

But it was a surprise: I cancelled my subscription last week, following a six-week saga of non-delivery, lame excuses, and representatives who just didn’t care.

Here’s how The Wall Street Journal lost a 20+-year customer through poor service and impersonal customer relations – and seven tips about customer retention during service disruptions for your smart marketing strategy.

“I Apologize for the Inconvenience”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently cut home delivery to four days a week. Plain Dealer carriers also used to handle home delivery of The Wall Street Journal to some Cleveland subscribers, including me, so the Journal had to find a new carrier.

The Journal sent an email a few days ahead of time to alert me to an upcoming carrier change. But something went wrong and my home delivery stopped.

After a few days, I notified the Journal online. They apologized and said they were working on a solution. They suggested I read the paper online in the meantime and offered me 30 days of free online access (though I already had online access).

Weeks went by. Non-delivery continued and my frustration grew. I did live chats online with their service team about once a week to alert them to the unresolved problem, ask for credit for non-delivered papers, and find out the status of a solution. “We’re working on the problem” was the standard response. No one knew when service would resume.

Finally, one representative estimated a resolution in four to six weeks. By then, I’d had enough. Even more important, I’d stopped missing the Journal. It was no longer a “must-read” part of my day.

I called to cancel and a phone representative handled the transaction efficiently. But she didn’t do three important things that might have saved the customer relationship:

• Try to get me to change my mind;
• Offer a solution that would satisfy my concerns;
• Express any regret about losing a 20+-year customer.

7 Ways to Retain Customers During a Service Disruption

Service disruptions can happen to any business, often due to circumstances that are outside your control. Here are seven ways to retain customers if this happens to you:

1. Develop contingency plans. Smart marketers plan for disruptions before they occur. Have contingency plans in place and a well-trained team ready to deploy those plans.
2. Notify customers immediately. Get in touch with customers right away to let them know you’re anticipating a disruption or are aware of the problem and working on a solution. The Journal sent an email in advance of the switch, but they didn’t contact me to let me know there was a problem with the new carrier. I had to contact them — repeatedly.
3. Reach out to your best customers personally. Imagine how differently this story might turned out if someone – anyone – from the Journal had called me at my home or office to reassure me that they knew about the problem and were working hard to resolve it for me. That never happened.
4. Provide another solution while the disruption is taking place. Something is usually better than nothing and the Journal got this part right: At least I had online access.
5. Avoid generic excuses. Almost every live chat I had with members of the Journal staff followed a predictable script, mostly apologizing for my inconvenience and telling me they were trying to solve the problem. I could almost predict the dialogue. It felt rote and impersonal.
6. Keep customers informed, especially if the service issue continues longer than you and the customer anticipated. The only contact I received from the Journal during this problem was in response to my complaints. There was no proactive customer outreach to me.
7. Show the customer you truly care. If even one person on the Journal staff, especially the person who handled my subscription cancellation, had expressed genuine concern about my situation and acknowledged their desire to keep a decades-long customer, they might have saved the relationship.

Service problems don’t have to cost you a customer. If you plan ahead, communicate effectively, and show people how much you value their business, you can turn a service problem into an opportunity to increase customer loyalty.

Will I still read the Journal? Yes, online. It’s the most important news source for American business and as a marketing consultant, I need to read it to effectively serve my clients.

But after more than 20 years, I’ll no longer be looking for the print edition in my driveway. And that’s too bad for the Journal and me.