The Value of Customer Forgiveness « THE DREAM IN ACTION

August 17, 2010
Posted by Ryan Graves

The Value of Customer Forgiveness

There are many beneficial factors I could write about when it comes to why Silicon Valley (or more specifically, San Francisco) is awesome for starting a company. The reality is that there are very specific business benefits that I’ve experienced over the past 5 months in launching a business and seemingly popular product in SF. The strongest of all of those benefits is the value of customer forgiveness.

In the first 2 months of UberCab being live in the app store, we’ve seen tremendous *but early* growth. We went from doing 5 rides in a single night, to nearly 50 rides in a single night. Bam! We’ve gotten here quickly because we’ve made our product easy to use and awesome to talk about, and the organic word of mouth that everyone covets so dearly is exactly what has driven our growth. But greater than the value of social web word of mouth is the fact that customers are using these channels to help us improve, and we’re listening.

About a month ago we went through a relatively small stretch (a few days) of wacky billing. 1 of 3 trips had a completely wrong total fare and we decided, because we’re a lean & scrappy team that we were going to go face down on fixing the issue and combat the potential bad press with PHAT customer service. It worked. We found that if approached head on, the problems of inaccurate fares were actually an opportunity to expose ourselves to our surprisingly forgiving customers in our most vulnerable state. For that, they loved us. We solidified a number of customers that I suspect we’ll have for a long time to come just because we honestly explained our error, hooked them up with Uber credits, and sincerely said, Thank you.

Launching products in New York, Chicago, or wherever else, I’m convinced that you wouldn’t have the same customer forgiveness as you’d see in the Valley. People here understand product infancy, they understand under resourced teams and they generally respect the sheer man hours and passion that goes into making a product work even half the time. It’s truly been mind boggling the amount of love, forgiveness, and sharing we’ve seen around UberCab over the past 2 months being live.

All I can say now is, thank you dear clients for sticking with us. We won’t stop busting our ass, being PHAT on customer service, and generally working hard so that you keep saying, WOW…and forgive us from time to time.

**value of customer forgiveness might be coin-able, if so feel free to quote ;)

0 Comments

Posted Under Entrepreneurship

Ovurmind 5 pts

I think that primary to forgiveness is the power of apology. Many disciplines are beginning to recognize this as outlined in "On Apology" http://bit.ly/9UG1r3 When ever I encounter forgiveness, I don't view that I am working with a forgiving client, but that I am working with intelligent people. Forgiveness is not a kop-out, but if it burns like a developed muscle, the resulting growth is an earned maturation and learned intelligence.

share flag

spam
offensive
disagree
off topic

onecaseman 6 pts

I don't think this is a Bay Area specific phenomenon. At GrubHub, we're now in 13 cities (including the Bay Area), and we've experienced customer forgiveness in every city we've opened up so far. With food delivery, no matter how good a job you do, sometimes the food will be late, and sometimes it won't be all that good. The key seems to just acknowledge the problem and try to fix it instead of defending yourself, passing responsibility, or saying it's not your fault. In order to forgive you, customers want to know you understand that you did something wrong. And if you have the ability to give them something in return for their trouble, that can really push a negative experience likely to make you lose a customer permanently into a positive experience where you can expect someone to try you again.

It's likely your company's ability to acknowledge the issue, address it, and compensate for the negative experience (with, in this case, Uber credits) that won people over, not that your customer base is all San Franciscans who understand startups. There are startups, and even more importantly, early adopters, everywhere who understand product infancy, but I think, even if they didn't, you still would have given a positive experience to your customers by just having good customer service.

THE DREAM IN ACTION

By Ryan Graves

The Value of Customer Forgiveness