Welcome to the Master of Disaster Video Blog. This is an ongoing series of tips and strategies to help you prepare your business and home to survive any type of disaster. Look for simple ways to get started and explanations of industry terms in easy to understand language. In this episode, we look at the Customer Service Disaster. Customer Service Disasters can have a devastating impact on your bottom line as well in lost clients and reputation. What are the keys to a successful Customer Service Experience. Join The Master of Disaster and my sidekick Rocco, The World's Youngest Corporate Video Blogger to find out. Hi, it's Jonathan Garber, The Master of Disaster. And, Rocco, the Junior Master of Disaster. Recently we experienced a different kind of disaster. A customer service disaster. A Customer Service Disaster can be just as damaging to your bottom line as a physical catastrophe. Let me tell you what happened. We recently travelled to another city to visit an amusement park and we found out there was an Ethiopian restaurant there. Now my wife, the Mistress of Disaster, and myself love Ethiopian food. So, we made a reservation and drove half an hour from our hotel to get there. We sat down and waited and waited and waited. Finally, I got us menus myself. This was a bad sign but we were invested already, right? This was a modest sized restaurant and not crowded. But it took 20 minutes before we could place our order. It turns out they were short a waiter that night that couldn't make it in. So we went back to waiting. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, the food came. And it was great! We stuffed ourselves. I would have ordered more but couldn't stand the thought of the added wait. Bear in mind, I have two small kids and we spent the day at an amusement park. They're falling apart and we still have a 30 minute drive back to the hotel.   Another long wait to pay the bill. I left the receipt on the table and we just left. No apology. No coffee, dessert. No, "please come back and give us another chance". We just saw ourselves out. Now look, every business has competition. To most customers, your final deliverable or service may ultimately be indiscernible from your competitions. What's the difference? The experience. How did you make them feel about doing business with you? Did you go the extra mile or just the bare minimum? Here's the tough question. How did you handle it, when you dropped the ball. When you were short a waiter. Did you make excuses or own the problem and go full throttle to make it right and get that customer experience back on track? Does your organization have a documented process to solve customer complaints. If not, bring in pizza, sit your team down and make a plan, now.   Now, Connections for Business works in computer technology. Today, lots of people can work on computers and my end product, a working piece of business tech, might look very similar to another company's work. The difference is the journey we took with our client to get there. That's why our clients tend to be, how shall I put it? Raving fanatics of ours. Here's a secret. Sometimes, we screw up. We drop the ball. But we have documented processes to communicate honestly to the client and make it right. And the clients that have experienced that level of Customer Service are among our most loyal. See, I have a philosophy. Customer Service is what you do when things go wrong, not when they go right. The measure of a service organization is how they handle problems. When there are no problems, most customers will just say "satisfactory" on a survey. But when things go off the rails, you own the problem and make it right, those customers will comment how great your service is and your level of integrity is high. Take a gut check and order that pizza. This is Jon Garber the Master of Disaster and Rocco, The Junior Master of Disaster asking you "What would you do if Godzilla stepped on your business?" Please email me with questions or suggestions for topics mod@connections.com and visit http://blog.connections.com/ Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/modconnections Be sure to "Like" us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/Connectionsforbusiness