“Oops! That shouldn’t be free!” How to recover from #CX goofs
The price for the fruit on my company’s ecommerce website was $0.00.
Yeah, I (now) don’t think that looks right either.
12 customers thought it looked awesome though, placing their orders for some delicious, completely free fruit.
I discovered this while helping another customer with a totally separate issue. After I resolved their issue, I took time to scrape away at whatever golden nugget of OOPS I just uncovered.
I reported the findings to my boss who immediately admitted we had a problem and tackled the mistake, fixing the pricing on the website.
This was very clearly a mistake on the side of my company. So, how did we work through it?
Deliver the Feedback
It really starts with me or other team members reporting feedback about there being an issue to those that are in a position to do something to fix the issue. The pain of sending a Slack message to your manager or team member and being ignored is useless. Being heard, understood and validated that there is something wrong without blame, guilt or simply being ignored is important for creating feedback funnels. The company should have the opportunity to make it right
Took Ownership
Mistakes happen, as much as we’d like them to not. In this case, we didn’t put blame on any one person or thing – it was our mistake, we owned it. The priority was high in this case, as it was financial related, so it was fixed quickly. While not all issues are fixed immediately, taking ownership of issues and being realistic about resolutions is crucial.
Followed Through
This is the kicker: we followed through on the customers getting their free fruit. Yes, we could have absolutely told them it was a mistake and we corrected it by charging them. While understandable, we factored in the costs for this and it made sense to proceed with what the customer saw on our website: $0.00 for their fruit.
Informed
Customers may not realize that that free fruit isn’t a normal occurrence with our company. To set expectations, I sent this lighthearted email to each customer:
So, how did you recover from a recent #CX goof? Share with me in the comments, send me a Tweet or DM over in CX Accelerator!