The MAKE Better Customer Outcomes framework consists of the following key principles:
- Make the right promises
- Avoid empty promises
- Keep your promises
- Embrace broken promises
Embracing broken promises means acknowledging incidences where the company has failed to meet its own published standards. It enables a firm to see such complaints from the customer’s perspective, and this will underpin a fair and swift resolution.
Embracing broken promises can help a firm to earn and rebuild the trust of complainants and other potential customers.
Embracing broken promises is a key step to help a firm recognise that there might have been a breach of the customer’s trust – and thereby focus on regaining their trust rather than seeking to prove them wrong.
A primary strategic objective for any firm is to maintain a strong and positive reputation that sustains customer trust. A timely and constructive response to broken promises is a key enabler in this respect. Prolonged and protracted engagement with customers with regard to broken promises, on the other hand, is likely to exacerbate distrust and make it more difficult to regain that trust in the long term.
A proactive approach to addressing broken promises is therefore critical to sustain customer trust.