Picture this. You’ve been a patron of a store, company or restaurant for some time and have received good service. One day, you visit this establishment, receive very poor service, are extremely disappointed and vow to never return again. Have you ever experienced this?
If so, you reached your Point of No Return. In business, The Point of No Return occurs when one single bad customer experience results in losing a customer for life. Regardless of the customer’s previous loyalty.
As such, for service providers it’s critical to avoid slipping below this critical line. Naturally, not all customers will be unforgiving and boycott a business because of one bad service incident, but, is potentially losing customers for life worth the risk?
Because customers have varied definitions of poor vs good service, as service providers we need to maintain high standards. This helps us reduce the risk of delivering “bad” service … In other words, even our average service needs to be at least “good”, so as to not be perceived as “bad” by those customers who are most demanding. Note that I’m not advocating mediocre service here, I’m being realistic knowing that some of our staff may at times slip and have a bad day. My point is our team needs to understand that even on a bad day, we need to make an effort to not slip below the line, chancing a possible Point of No Return.
Here’s a real-life example of The Point of No Return. In the past, my sister’s go-to place for brunch was a casual restaurant called The Grill. Although not exceptional, the food was always good and so was the service. A few weeks ago, she brunched at The Grill and had a negative service and food quality experience. The result? In her words, “I’m never going there again”. There you have it, she dipped down into The Point of No Return… a customer lost for life.
In conclusion, I believe this simple but important concept should be taught to all service providers, including managers and frontline staff. We all need to do our very best to remain “above the line” and avoid Points of No Returns.
Hi Gilles, this is so true and even I have experienced this feeling before.
The unfortunate piece to this is that sometimes we forget about how incredible the service was or how gracious the staff was toward us on many occasions and it was “just one bad experience” that tipped us over the edge.
Part of me says that something else, perhaps just a small thing must have happened that started the feeling of displeasure and that the next experience created this feeling of never wanting to go back again.
It is an unfortunate ending to otherwise great business relationships.
Hi Elizabeth,
You’re right. It’s unfortunate that the reality for many customers, a single bad experience “below the line” (refer to diagram), can trump all previous good experiences.
As the old adage says, it’s a lot harder to get a new customer that to keep one. We need to make sure our current customers, those who are currently conducting business with us including first-timers, are all served at the very least, with a service level above the line.
Cheers!
And possibly having a conversation with the long term customer that if they are ever unhappy to please reach out immediately
It could save issues in the future
Absolutely!