Giving customers a fair fix

It's a big day. Important clients are visiting, and you need to make a good impression.

You take them to a popular local eatery for lunch. Everything is going perfectly . . . until the waiter spills an entire tray of drinks down the back of your expensive business suit.

As the waiter tries to clean up, the manager arrives, offering a half-hearted apology. You hand him your jacket and ask him to have it cleaned, and he looks at you like you're asking quite a big favor.

Despite these problems, you manage to survive the day's events. You stop at a grocery store on the way home to pick up a few things, and, of course, get stuck at the back of a long line at the checkout.

But when you get to the front, the worker apologizes. She's extremely sorry for the inconvenience, and to help make it up to you, she hands you a free candy bar.

Most people can relate to both of these situations. And it's not hard to guess which of these businesses would be more likely to keep you as a customer, right?

The easy answer to that question doesn't mean businesses "get it" when it comes to customer service, said Kristen DeTienne, professor of organizational leadership and strategy in Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management.

DeTienne is an expert in the field of customer recovery, or the way companies try to make customers happy once there's been a service failure.

Studies have shown that it costs up to nine times more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, she said, so improving customer retention has a direct impact on profits. And after working on studies with fellow Marriott School professor Kristie Seawright, DeTienne said she has found that keeping a customer after something goes wrong requires both psychological and tangible efforts.

The psychological component, she said, focuses on whether the company is empathetic toward the customer and genuinely sorry. The tangible response refers to how the business makes it up to the customer, whether through a discount or a free product or service.

"I can say I'm really sorry, but sometimes, if you've been really inconvenienced, that's not enough to regain your loyalty," DeTienne said.

"We found that both components work together to regain customer loyalty. . . . You can't have one without the other and expect to be successful."