When your service fails what is the experience?

What happens to the experience of your customer when your service fails? Things will go wrong at some point and it is vital to recover well from these situations.

I am a member of a car club service. I can make a booking for a hire car or van from my phone, open it with a card and drive away in minutes — usually. We’ve used it quite a few times recently to move into my office and then from one office to the other plus a couple of visits as I don’t run a car.

We needed to take a trip to IKEA to buy some chairs for the office and had planned to do it on Saturday 27th October. Unfortunately neither of the vans were available.

We rescheduled to Sunday and I booked a transit for 10:15. When we arrived the van refused to unlock. I called the service centre and got through to someone who took some details and tried to resolve the issue by sending a signal to the vehicle. My main feedback for him is that he needed to keep me much better informed as to what he was doing as a few times I had to ask if he was still there.

In the end I was cut off, when I dialled back in I reached someone else who was much more helpful. They very quickly established that it was not going to be possible to gain access to that van and so changed the booking to the other one from 11:15. He also offered to pay for a hot drink and a sandwich for us both while we waited.

After a tea and sandwich we went to the location of the other van however it was not there. at 11:30 I called and spoke to a third person who obviously had access to the previous calls that I had made. The van had been booked out until 11:15 and the previous customer had not yet returned it. Within 5 minutes they had made contact with that person and I was informed that they were not able to get the van back for another two hours.

I was offered a credit to make up for the inconvenience. I then didn’t hear anything further until my monthly statement arrived by email and could see that the credit had been applied to my account.

The service has aways worked really well for me in the past. Sometimes things fail and in the case of the van not being returned there is nothing they could do about that.

• Two of the three members of staff who I dealt with on that day were excellent on the phone.
• The member of staff who offered the food and the credit was obviously empowered to do that.
• I would have benefitted from a follow up email as well so that I knew what was going to happen next and how I would be reimbursed. It’s worth thinking about that final communication piece specifically.

When your service fails, what is the experience? Will it make people appreciate your service or push them to your competitors?