Serve a Slice of Fresh Baked Humble Pie

Retain customer loyalty even after negative feedback with creative notes of appreciation.

Nurse Next Door, a Vancouver based senior care company uses the humble pie approach to keeping valued, albeit sometimes, complaining customers. Each time they receive a complaint, they send out a freshly baked pie with a message that says “We have messed up, and we are humbled.”

The firm estimates that they have kept over $90,000 worth of business for the cost of approximately $1,300 worth of pies over the years. What an innovative idea! Now that’s something that their customers will always remember.

We’ve all heard that keeping an existing customer is much less costly than trying to acquire a new one.  So what is in your program for those customers who might have been unhappy with the service they received from your company?

Personally, whenever I receive any kind of negative feedback (thankfully it is quite rare), my weapon of choice is a personal hand written thank you note from me, thanking them for their comments, along with a gift card to our store. However after learning about what Nurse Next Door does, I’m looking for something a little more creative and perhaps a little more delicious.