Yesterday, I faced a pink food delivery service failure in Singapore that reminded me of my satisfaction study. The food delivery service had confirmed my order at the checkout. After waiting for an hour, I checked in horror to realise the order had been cancelled. I tried in vain to connect to the service chat. A hangry me complained severely only to be told that my payment was “cash on delivery”. Of course, each reply will reveal more reasons as I provided screenshot of the order confirmation. Finally, one admitted that there was a technical issue with the payment gateway.
Be Sensitive
Service level was failed at several level for the pink “FoodP”. The most serious failure is the insensitiveness to the customer needs. In this case, the customer service was literally unreachable for this time sensitive service. The customer was only interested in getting the meal at the timing. If your service cannot be fulfilled, it is courtesy to apologise quickly, rectify and compensate for the cancellation. Imagine a family of hangry members!
Be Truthful
The aftermath of complaint management was totally chaotic. Instead of finding out the root cause of this failure, the first cause of action place the blame to the customer. If you do not have the full truth, it is better to acknowledge an error had happened than to lie to the customer. In many ways, complaints resolution are horrific and answers are “bot” like in nature.
Service level failure management is a poorly understood area in many eCommerce platform. Like what my satisfaction study mention, the satisfaction points can come from a network of partners from payment gateway, delivery and food providers. If you want to provide standard complaint answers, you might as well get a bot! If no, let your human be human and create a satisfactory complaint resolution experience.
Danny Kwok 