Wouldn't it be great if we all could provide our clients with a great service experience every time?  Everything always worked perfectly and our employees always delivered exactly what the clients were looking for?  It would make things so much easier!   

Unfortunately, no matter how much time you spend planning, training and hoping for a great client experience, things will not always go as planned.  However, if you have a good service recovery process in place, you can actually improve your clients' loyalty so they are even more loyal after the service issue occured than they were before. 

Consider these statistics from McKinsey and Company: 

• Customers who have major problems but don't complain continue to do business with the firm at a rate of about 9%.
• Those who do complain, regardless of the outcome, continue to do business with the firm at a rate of approximately 19%.
• Customers who have their complaint resolved continue to do business with the firm at a rate of 54%.
• If you resolve the issue quickly, customers will continue to do business with your firm at a rate of 82% - 95%.
• Customers who complain and are satisfied are up to 8% more loyal than if they had no problem at all. 

The key to creating loyal clients when service issues occur is to have a good service recovery process in place before the problem occurs.  If you're not quite sure what your service recovery process is, or just assume your clients are receiving a great client experience every time, by each employee that interacts with each client problem, chances are your clients are one of the more than 80% who have been shown to leave.   

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