When I was working with Domino’s Pizza, our area’s sales were 2.5 times the national average. Trying to define best practices, the company sent a marketing team to Baltimore to investigate what we did differently.
What they discovered was that we excelled at what I called “remarkable recoveries.” We preached that everyone was going to make mistakes, but how you reacted to them determined if a customer would remain loyal.
We considered mistakes a chance to earn customer loyalty—not by satisfying customers, but by wowing them. Research had shown us that correcting a problem did not lead to loyalty. To earn that, you had to impress them.
If I received a complaint, I would give the person 10 times the value. If the product was missing a topping, I would give them a coupon for 10 free toppings; if the pizza was not cooked properly, I would send 10 gift certificates, each one worth a free pizza.
The marketing department found that while the company had a customer turnover rate of 50%, our area turned over customers at only a 2% rate.
We then took that understanding of customer retention and applied it to our team members. We realized that we needed to make the same remarkable recoveries with them as we did with our customers.
I remember implementing a new bonus system that made our people mad. Once I started to get the negative feedback, I immediately notified everyone that we would change back to the old system and apologized for my mistake.
Often, we think of apologizing as showing a sign of weakness. Instead, it brought tremendous loyalty to our company. People understand that we all make mistakes; they just want to work with people who are willing to own up to them.
Next time you make a mistake, take a moment to apologize sincerely. It will make your relationship stronger with a co-worker, friend, parent, or significant other.
I find it very interesting that we all appreciate apologies. Can any of us say that an apology negatively affects a relationship with us? And yet, it is so hard for us to apologize. I think it comes down to a matter of pride despite the fact that it clearly does not damage our character by apologizing. This reminds me of a story from Ben Franklin. Franklin had a coworker that he could not get along with. They both were looking to accomplish the same thing but their personal relationship was not ideal. So Franklin, knowing the man had a large library, first praised his library, asked to borrow a book, and then later returned it and profusely thanked him. Franklin teaches us that in order to get along and develop better relationships we must swallow our pride. I think we can all work on this, and I think that it is something that gets easier as you do it more. Sometimes we need to stop thinking of our personal image and start acting on the common good.
ReplyDelete-Tommy Podles
DeleteThis post points out something that not many people notice often, and that is the power of apology. As Tommy said, it really does boil down to the concept of pride. I was very confused about the concept of pride for a long time; when given biblical teachings such as "if another man is to try to steal your cloak, give it to him willingly," or that "if another man attacks you, do not hit him back." In our culture today, this just seemed very odd to me. After all, I didn't want to let myself be pushed around by everybody. However, it took the advice of of someone who reads the Bible (alot more than I do) for me to understand that these verses are really about pride. We can't be so haughty that we become blind to the reality of things around us, negatively damaging our character. These extreme examples in the Bible shock us into realizing this. Upon reading this post, I realized the same mechanism was at work. With such an overzealous form of apology, it recognizes the human capacity for error while also signalling to the recipient of the apology that they are worth all of this. It's certainly something I need to practice more, and I think we can all learn alot from the power of apologies.
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