Service recovery unlocks the value in a customer and is part of fostering an ongoing relationship with them. The service recovery paradox is a common phenomenon in business that can result in increased customer loyalty to your brand. Consider this graph.

This shows that customers who have experienced service failure and a successful recovery are more loyal over time than those who haven't experienced a service failure.

Image source. This is because your organization has the chance to demonstrate just how important the customer is to your brand. By solving their problem for them and going the extra mile to show how sorry you are, customers grow closer to your business.

That's not a reason to go looking for service failures to fix — but it is a reason to take the service failures that do occur and turn them into opportunities for earning customer loyalty.

The first step to service recovery is offering a sincere and heartfelt apology to the customer. It must not feel mechanical and you must ensure that the customer feels like you mean it. Show that you appreciate and regret what the customer has gone through in the situation.

Think about what the customer wants to hear from an apology and offer it to them. What is driving their frustration? How are they feeling at the moment? Take a moment to step into their shoes. Listen closely to the customer's problem and tailor your apology to their unique circumstances.

This is no time for a boilerplate message that obviously feels copy and pasted. The customer wants to feel like you are taking their side and listening closely to what they are saying.

They want to feel like they are your top priority and that their problem is being taken seriously. You need to empower your employees to take ownership of the problem and take steps to correct it.

No customer wants to feel passed around to different team members or feel like your service rep is blaming the situation on someone else. Allow your employees to take control and use their time and effort to solve customer problems.

Enable them to use the company's resources to help customers recover from service breakdowns instead of passing the buck to a senior manager. Structure your support team so reps are empowered to solve problems quickly and efficiently, without having to ask permission from managers.

Ensure the service they provide is speedy and efficient. You've apologized to the customer and taken ownership of the problem.

Now is the time to ask follow-up questions and do some digging to get to the root of the issue and find out if you can fix the problem. When working on service recovery, it's important to do as much of the investigative work as you can, rather than relying on the customer to tell you what happened or troubleshoot with you.

Frustrated customers don't want to answer additional questions and they don't want to repeat themselves. Instead, read through past conversations, walk through the customer's experience and figure out as much as you can yourself. Only when you feel like you have the full context of the issue should you return to the customer to ask any additional questions.

Because you've already offered them an apology and aligned yourself as an advocate, they'll be much more amenable to working with you on a solution. Once you've discovered the cause of the problem, it's time to go about fixing it.

You might have to replace a substandard service or product, which is key to meeting customer expectations. Don't let the conversation with the customer end until you've managed to fix the problem. This requires service reps with excellent problem-solving skills and you need to make sure you train them in service recovery.

Solving the problem means that the customer is satisfied with the resolution. Remember to ask follow-up questions to check that the customer feels the problem has been fixed and don't make assumptions. A customer may have been thoroughly inconvenienced by your service lapse and it's not enough to offer exactly what they should have received in the first place.

You may need to offer something extra, like free shipping or a free month's subscription, in order to make up for the customer's sense of injustice. Come up with creative ways to restore customer happiness with your products and brand.

Remember that your customer has been stressed out and inconvenienced by the service issue, and you need to go that extra mile to make up for the hassle. Once you've closed the conversation with the customer, don't forget to follow up with them to check they are satisfied with the resolution.

Show your concern for the customer by sending a follow-up email or making a follow-up phone call, which means you can also catch any further issues the customer may be experiencing.

Make sure you let your coworkers know that the customer was the victim of a service failure. Any further interactions with the customer should be made with this in mind so your staff can communicate appropriately without the customer having to explain their issue over again.

Consider sending a handwritten note to the customer to show how much you appreciate their business. A customer ordered a big basket of baked goods from Zingerman's Deli.

Unfortunately, the delivery was damaged en route and the cookies were crumbled and the brownies squashed. The customer and their family still managed to eat the goods but when Zingerman's sent a follow-up customer satisfaction email, they expressed their disappointment with the shipment.

Zingerman's responded immediately to the less than satisfied response and offered to send a replacement basket, a gift card, or a refund. Club Med-Cancun recovered from a service disaster and won the loyalty of a group of vacationers. The vacationers had endless nightmares traveling from New York to their Mexican destination.

The flight was six hours late in taking off, made two unscheduled stops, and circled for thirty minutes before it could land in Mexico. Because of the unexpected delays, the flight was en route for ten hours more than expected and ran out of food and drinks. Eventually, it arrived at two in the morning, which was such a rough landing that oxygen masks were released.

When the plane eventually arrived at the gate, the passengers were hungry and believed their vacation was ruined before it had even begun. Luckily, the general manager of the Cancun resort heard about the terrible flight and quickly created a balm for the wound.

He took his staff to the airport where they arranged a table of snacks and drinks and set up a stereo to play music. Guests shuffling through the gate received a personal greeting, assistance with their bags, a sympathetic ear, and a ride to the resort.

Waiting for them at Club Med was a banquet, mariachi band, and champagne. Staff had encouraged other guests to wait up and greet the vacationers, and they partied until dawn.

The Sydenham River recovery strategy is an excellent example of an ecosystem approach to recovering species at risk.

This multi-species watershed recovery strategy is seen as the first of its kind in Canada. Once completed, this strategy may be used as a model to assist similar conservation efforts in other aquatic ecosystems.

The Sydenham River watershed is part of the Lake St. Clair drainage in southwestern Ontario. The system, which extends over kilometres, averages 38 kilometres in breadth and has a total drainage of 2, square kilometres, is home to at least 80 fish species and 34 freshwater mussel species.

The Canadian distributions of these fish and mussels are restricted to the Sydenham River, thus creating a unique ecosystem that many researchers regard as a biological treasure. Yet five of its mussel species are endangered, two of its fish and one reptile species are threatened, and several other fish in the system are of special concern according to COSEWIC.

Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes have decimated local populations of native mussels, leaving inland streams their only refuge.

But these inland streams, such as the Sydenham River watershed, have been degraded by human activity. For most Sydenham River system species, the major threat is siltation and associated turbidity caused by agricultural practices and the alteration of shoreline.

The Sydenham River recovery strategy is a six-year strategy that involves field surveys of mussel and fish species at risk, the development of a database of the watershed geography, and the collection and synthesis of information on land use and water quality in the area.