From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans

CHAPTER 18

Recover with Style

Even the most widely adored, legendary companies are not immune from customer experience failures. What sets these firms apart, however, is that when a failure occurs, they don’t resign themselves to creating a dissatisfied customer or worse, a vocal brand detractor.

Rather, what these great companies recognize is that if you overcorrect on the recovery, you have an opportunity to not just repair the customer relationship, but enhance it.

A well-executed recovery can create a peak in the experience, and not just any peak, but one that comes at the very end of the interaction episode. In line with the Finish Strong principle (covered in Chapter 8), that means an exceptional recovery can exert a disproportionate ...