Turning Problems into Positives

The "Happiest Place on Earth" may be in Florida, but there are no mice there.

To me, the happiest place on Earth is a little condo in Sarasota where my family and my sister-in-law's family get together every year for white sandy beaches, a calm pool, and a week of relaxation.

That is until this year ...

Don't get me wrong, my family still had the time of our lives, but my sister-in-law had a completely different experience ... two days without A/C in the June Florida heat.

Certainly, the blame is not on the condo, they didn't shut off the A/C on purpose. But the way the issue was handled may loose then a faithful, recurring customer. And there are lessons here for your branches. When it comes down to it, the condo's problem was a lack of leadership:

Accountability

No one accepted accountability for the A/C. What was experienced was a lot of finger pointing.

When an issue occurs at your branch, your team needs to own the problem. If the point of contact can't solve the issue, they need to work to find someone internally who can and stay with the issue until it's resolved. Do not say, "you need to talk to Sally and she's off until Tuesday."

Responsibility

What was forgotten is that the responsibility is to the customer not on the customer. Even if your institution is not at fault for the error - the perception is that you are. If the customer is unhappy, your entire team needs to work to make it better.

In the case of our condo, they expected the customer to talk directly to maintenance until the A/C was fixed.

Empowerment

Great leaders empower their team to make decisions. Otherwise, when the leader is not around, nothing gets done! Your team has to be comfortable doing what's right for the customer without the fear of second guessing. The more empowered your team, the faster customer issues will be be resolved and the better overall experience your customer will have.

The bottom line is that we can't control when the A/C will die. But we can demonstrate a sincere desire to solve our customer's problems. To me, customer issues are really customer opportunities. Some of the most memorable and positive experiences I've had with a company is when something goes wrong and the company goes above and beyond to make it right.