Improve Your Brand Reputation With a Customer Recovery Program

While business mistakes are inevitable, how you manage them will affect your brand reputation more than any mishap. A well-executed customer recovery program can lead to a fiercely loyal consumer base. According to insights from Salesforce, 89% of shoppers are more likely to make another purchase from a brand after a positive experience with customer service.

In this article, we discuss how an effective service recovery strategy backed by enticing digital rewards can help you retain valuable customers and prevent a bad experience from tarnishing your brand reputation. 

The Importance of a Good Brand Reputation

It costs five times more to attract a new customer than keep an existing one. Acquiring customers is essential for business growth, but it’s much easier to up-sell a current customer, which means that your profitability relies on your ability to retain your existing base. 

Your brand’s reputation has an impact on both new and old customers. If your company drops the ball on customer service, you’ll lose once-loyal shoppers. When the news of their negative experience spreads, potential customers will pass on your brand in favor of competitors with a better reputation.

How To Build a Successful Customer Recovery Program

An effective customer recovery program can turn dissatisfied customers into loyal ones, especially when you combine it with valuable rewards. Whenever a problem comes your way, such as missing a client’s deadline or sending the wrong item, you can turn it into something positive with the following tips for recovering unhappy customers:

Anticipate the Customers’ Needs

It’s essential to meet customer expectations when providing goods and services, but when that doesn’t happen, they need a quick and easy way to raise the issue. Even better, you should try to find a way to anticipate problems before the customer complains. For example, Domino’s Pizza automatically sends customers a coupon for a free pizza if their order gets to them later than the delivery estimate. This strategy makes the customer happy and facilitates repeat business.

Offer a Sincere Apology With a Gift

An apology helps, but a gift can be even more effective. Once you’ve investigated and resolved the issue, you could send a small Starbucks gift card to show your appreciation for their patience. Or if the issue is with a VIP where the stakes are higher, a larger, more valuable gift might make more sense, for example a Virtual Visa gift card with a hefty balance.

Empower the Front Line to Make Things Right

Many customer service issues happen on the front lines, between the customer and a cashier, salesperson, or service representative. 

Often, these employees have received by-the-book training that teaches them that they should always follow the company’s policies. This approach leads to them telling the customer that there’s nothing they can do, leaving the customer dissatisfied and damaging your brand’s customer loyalty.

Empowering your employees to take ownership of issues and make reasonable decisions that will recover the customer’s happiness is crucial. 

Follow Up With the Customer

In a successful customer recovery program, there should always be a follow-up with the customer and the employees involved. Even after you fix the problem, you can reinforce your recovery efforts by sending the customer a follow-up message. After some time has passed, you might want to send them a discount or digital gift card to remind them you care about their experience as a customer.

It’s also vital to share customer service feedback with your employees to improve their customer recovery strategies. Having a team that can effectively solve customer complaints leads to a fantastic brand reputation and enhanced customer loyalty.

Add Rewards to Improve Customer Experience

We’ve already mentioned a few ways you can use rewards to turn a negative experience around. Below are a few more examples of how you can use gifts to recover aggrieved customers:

• Offer a virtual Visa to use as a discount for next time
• Send a personalized message with a choice of rewards to select from
• Automatically send an apology gift when there’s a breakdown of service

Why You Should Use Incentives To Boost Customer Retention

Adding incentives to your customer recovery program boosts customer satisfaction and, in turn, provides the following benefits for your business:

• Saves money on marketing to new customers
• Increases revenue due to repeat purchases
• Boosts number of referrals
• Reduces customer churn

Rewards keep your customers coming back for more, and your loyal followers are much more likely to spread the word about your company’s excellent customer service and attract new leads.

Use Giftbit to Delight Your Customers

Looking for ways to enhance your customer recovery program? Giftbit allows you to send personalized apology gifts and track the results of your efforts. Sign up today and find out how you can implement automatic digital rewards to improve customer loyalty.