The 'three Hs' that will always fix a bad customer experience

However, regardless of the advanced systems we may implement, mistakes and mishaps will happen. It's how we respond as a business in these moments of truth that can turn an unhappy customer into a customer for life.

One such way of responding is something I've coined the 'three Hs', which I learned from a personal experience in the early, 'bleeding edge' days of e-commerce.

Valuable lessons learned from 'Brian' the customer service agent

As an early adopter of e-commerce in the late 1990s, I turned to an online greeting card site to send a birthday card to my Mom in Atlanta. The site allowed users to choose a greeting card, insert their message online and then have the physical card posted to their loved ones via snail mail. A perfect blend of bricks and mortar with digital.

Long story short, my Mom never received the card. Something went wrong. So, I went back to the online greeting card site to voice my complaint. What I got in response was an email that restored my confidence in their business and taught me three valuable lessons in customer service which I still use today, 15 years later. The email read as follows:

Dear Julian,

I have looked high and low for your order and it is nowhere to be found. What I am going to do is give you a Gift I.D. number for a FREE card. I know it is no compensation for missing mom's day but maybe you could smooth things over with a funny one on us!

Just go to our home page, enter the "Special Access" area at the bottom of our page and use this number for a free card: [ 5-zq-rsfvn51-wb ]

If you have any further problems with your order, don't hesitate to contact me! And again, I apologise for the loss of your order. I hope that you come back to us...

Sincerely,
Brian

Faith restored - thanks to the three Hs

Instead of being upset, I ended up liking these guys more, because I felt like I was dealing with an actual human on the other side of the world who actually cared. I realised how "Brian" customer service agent did this: yes, there was a service issue that made me unhappy initially, but in response they were Honest, Humble and Heroic.

The 3 Hs explained

The use of these three Hs can be applied when responding to a mistake or a shortcoming in service or expectations.

1. Be Honest: Explain what happened, or in the example above, say you're honestly not sure what happened, but sincerely apologise...

2. Be Humble: Apologise, sincerely, and accept responsibility.

3. Be Heroic: Make up for it and "save the day". Find a solution to try and fix the situation. And assure them it won't happen again.

Being human, we will make mistakes and things will go wrong, but that's OK. A bad customer experience can be turned into a good one by showing customers the human side of your business by simply applying the three Hs in your response.