Chemicals Supply: Sampson Linus, Ecolab, Woodbury, Minn.
Regaining trust after service interruptions takes a multi-point resolution approach involving empathy, transparency and consistency.
Following are a few ways to help rebuild your customer relationships back to an acceptable level of rebuilt trust.
1. Take Responsibility with Sincerity — Customers appreciate honesty. A sincere apology for the inconvenience caused by the disruption of service, paired with a brief explanation of what happened, reassures them that you value their business and take the situation seriously.
2. Engage and Openly Communicate Any Mitigations — Produce a comprehensive mitigation plan; engage and communicate with the customer on what steps you are taking to prevent the disruptions in the future. This can come in the form of upgrading equipment, providing added technology, or improving processes, etc.
3. Offer Incentives — Providing incentives to mitigate any loss of revenue or product loss can help show appreciation to the customer for their patience. This is a well-known process favorable to many customers in some real-life scenarios I have personally seen.
4. Listen and Respond to Feedback — Be open to receive feedback, listen to concerns and show that you value their business. A simple follow-up message thanking them for their continued support can go a long way to make a difference.
5. Be Consistent — Delivering great service after a disruption takes time, but driving this change with consistency is the most effective way to restore confidence and strengthen your customer’s confidence in restored service.
Customers are unique. As a service provider, you know the voice of your customer and their service-level delivery expectation. Use those insights to provide the right fit model to regain customer trust and rebuild service excellence.
Equipment/Supply Distribution: Justin Oriel, Garment Machinery Company Inc., Needham, Mass.
In the commercial laundry industry, reliability is more than a goal, it’s a promise.
We’ve built our reputation on delivering quality equipment, responsive service and lasting partnerships with our clients. However, like many businesses, we recently faced unexpected service interruptions that affected operations and, more importantly, strained some of our customer relationships.
This experience served as a wake-up call. It reminded us how essential transparency, accountability and proactive communication are, especially in moments of challenge.
We’re working to earn back our customers’ trust, from implementing stronger service protocols to opening direct channels of communication and offering personalized solutions.
My hope is that others across the industry can learn from our missteps and our recovery. Mistakes happen, but it’s how we respond that defines the strength and integrity of our business.
Commercial Laundry: Edward Arzouian, Bates Troy Inc., Binghamton, N.Y.
The question posed to us this month was open-ended. The type of laundry is not defined. The length or extent of the service interruption is not specified. The type of customer(s) is uncertain.
Given all these variables, I’m going to respond from the point of view of our healthcare linen service and our institutional clients.
In our business, barring catastrophic events, we view service interruptions as unacceptable and risky to patients’ well-being. We have gone to great lengths, efforts and expense to minimize their possibility.
Part of the key to avoiding interruptions is redundancy and resilience. Like most healthcare linen laundries, we have redundant systems. We have two large boilers, three actually, though one is mothballed for now. We have two large compressors. We have two batch tunnel washer systems. In this regard, we are probably not that much different from many healthcare laundries.
That being said, we have gone above and beyond the norm to include our own, onsite energy production. More than 10 years ago, we installed a Combined Heat & Power (CHP) system also known as cogeneration (cogen). Our CHP system assists in powering our plant whenever our electric demand exceeds 50kW, basically whenever we turn on anything more than lights. We can produce up to 400 kW, which initially was enough to power about 90% of our plant and offices.
Ten years later, with the addition of equipment, that percentage has dropped to about 80% but still enough to run all our essential equipment. This system, which operates on natural gas, will run off the electric grid for as long as natural gas is available in the underground pipelines.
If both the electric grid and natural gas pipeline system collapse at the same time, that will be one of those catastrophic events I mentioned.
I mentioned resilience and redundancy as well. Our CHP system is modular. We have four 100kW units so one or two units can go down and the system still runs. We can service the units individually.
Another component in avoiding service interruptions is agreements with alternate suppliers and service providers. For laundries that have been accredited by the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC), as we were for 15 years, part of their standards are mandatory agreements with alternate suppliers, transporters and other laundries for backup. We are accredited now with TRSA and its Hygienically Clean program, but we maintain the same contingency plans.
Our healthcare institution and facility clientele understand and appreciate the commitment and efforts in guaranteeing them our service. It’s one of our major selling points.
Now, regardless of all the things I’ve detailed, there are inevitable hiccups in production and delivery for every kind of business be it healthcare, uniform, hospitality, retail, etc. That brings me to the last part of your question, “What advice can you share about regaining their (clients) trust?”
The answer is a quick and direct response to concerns and complaints. Bates Troy Inc. works to form a close relationship with our clients. They can easily reach our top management team and floor supervisors if they want or need to. We have a “Contact” page on our website with all our names, faces and contact information. We are very easy to reach.
Access and accountability build and maintain trust. That type of trust should be enough to overcome minor issues with service problems.
What we didn’t get into here are manpower shortages that lead to service disruptions, and the double-edged sword automation brings to that mix nor inventories, but those are whole other topics.
Consulting Services: Matthew Alexander, Pertl & Alexander LLC, Manlius, N.Y.
Rebuilding trust with a customer after the relationship has been strained by service interruptions begins by taking accountability for the failures by your organization that contributed to the issues. Conduct a thorough review of the causes of the service interruption and development of plans, practices and policies to remediate the damage and mitigate the potential of a repeat occurrence.
Such plans should include specific methods of measuring performance, communicating results to the customer and soliciting customer feedback.
After correcting the immediate issues that contributed to the service interruption, use a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to evaluate the underlying conditions that contributed the service interruption that could similarly create risk in other elements of the business. Communicating to the customer all the steps you’re taking to ensure reliable sustainable services is necessary to protect and enhance the company’s brand and your personal relationships with customers.
It is equally important to manage expectations by educating customers what may be reasonably expected in consideration of the contracted responsibility and resources accordingly allocated. However, it’s first critical there not be any apparent default to the services agreement so as not to appear to be deflecting from service interruptions.
Regularly monitor and report key performance indicators (KPI) and how they compare to the baseline. Report the same to your customers and solicit their feedback regarding expectations and compliance with objectives.
Implementing more robust added-value services, such as linen awareness training to educate customers and their associates regarding the value of linen and best practices for linen asset inventory management and textile care, can be helpful to demonstrating good faith and rebuilding trust.
After corrective actions have been made to address the service interruption and other initiatives to improve services have been implemented, invite customers to see the plants and to contribute their feedback to the process of continuous improvement.
Check back tomorrow when uniform/workwear manufacturing, linen supply and equipment manufacturing experts weigh in.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
