How to Turn a Mistake into a Loyal Customer
Mistakes happen. We all make them. We’re human.
So how do you handle mistakes you’ve made to your customers in your apparel decorating business?
If you handle your mistakes professionally and quickly, with your customer in mind, it actually can work out to your advantage.
Let me explain with a recent personal experience.
I was looking to buy a new couch, something economical.
Someone made the recommendation to check out the local “wholesale” type of warehouse.
The furniture was name brand, at a discounted price.
Perfect.
My wife and I went, found several couches that we liked and made a final decision to buy a smaller, 2 piece sectional.
To save on the $70 delivery fee, I decided to use my own pick-up truck and pick the couch up myself. I mean, it’s not hard to grab a buddy or neighbor to help me carry it in the house, so it didn’t phase me at all.
On the day that the couch was ready for pick-up, I stopped at the pick-up location. The two gentlemen working found my order in the garage, and loaded it onto my truck for me.
It was slightly raining and drizzling, so I was glad that the couch was all wrapped up in cardboard and plastic.
When I got home, some family members helped me carry the smaller piece of the two into the house.
However, when it came to the larger piece, it wouldn’t fit through the front door.
It wouldn’t fit through the back door, either.
Nor the garage door.
After much discussion with the Mrs., we decided to put the larger portion of the sectional couch in the garage temporarily because if I removed the back door frame, the couch would fit in. I was going to wait for another day when it was not raining to do this.
In the meantime, we decided to at least unwrap the smaller piece in the house so that we could start sitting on that, since we had no couch at the moment.
We opened it up and it wasn’t the right color that we had ordered.
In fact, we realized it wasn’t the right sectional couch that we had ordered.
It wasn’t even a sectional couch.
It was a love seat and the piece in the garage was a sofa when I went to check on that.
Once I inspected the labels on the packaging, we realized that we had accidentally received someone else’s order.
After trying to fit this couch in the house for an hour or two, plus the rain, I was tired and now very frustrated.
I didn’t want to have to load it all back up in my truck and take it back.
On top of that, at this point in the day, it was about time for the store to close. I called them up, and they immediately apologized for the mistake.
They then asked if I would be at home, and made arrangements for them to come with their truck to deliver my couch, and pick up the pieces that I had.
Not only that, but they made the arrangements for the same day, when they were about ready to close.
When they arrived, all of their trucks were still all out finishing up their deliveries, so they had rented a Uhaul truck to bring my couch.
Even though I had not paid for the delivery/installation, they continued to bring my sectional couch inside my house, installed the feet on the bottom, and hauled away all of the packaging, in addition to removing the wrong love seat, sofa, and packaging.
Talk about exceptional customer service! Renting a truck?!
They made a mistake, which was not an unreasonable thing to do. But then they went above and beyond to fix the mistake.
And they did it super fast.
That made me a repeat customer. I will definitely go back there next time I am looking for another piece of furniture.
[Related Content: 7 Ways to Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More]
Not only that, I asked immediately where I can go online to leave a 5-star review.
How often does a mistake lead to a 5-star review?
So it just goes to show that fixing a mistake quickly and going above and beyond, can not only fix the initial mistake, but make a customer want to come back again.
The outcome of the situation turned me into a better customer than if there was no mistake in the first place.
It showed me what the company was willing to do for me.
Has this ever happened to you in your t-shirt business?
Leave a comment with the mistake you made and how you fixed it. How did your customer react to the situation?