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What each failure gets, written down, so recovery doesn’t depend on who picks up or how loudly the customer complains. Plus a budget each agent can spend without asking.
Without a grid, recovery is set by things that shouldn’t matter: which agent answers and how hard the customer pushes. The polite customer with a damaged order gets less than the furious one with a late order. The grid fixes that; the budget handles what it can’t foresee.
| Failure | Fix | Remedy, first failure | Remedy, repeat within 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late 1 to 2 days, notified first | New date | None beyond the notice | Shipping refunded |
| Late 1 to 2 days, not notified | New date, apology | Shipping refunded | Credit of about 10% of the order |
| Late 3+ days, or past a date that mattered | Upgrade or reship if faster | Credit of about 10% of the order | Credit of about 20%, from a person |
| Split without warning | Say what’s coming, when | None unless late | Shipping refunded |
| Wrong or missing item | Ship the right item now | Credit of about 10% | Credit of about 20% |
| Damaged | Replace now | Credit of about 10% | Refund the item too |
| Lost | Replace now, before the carrier claim | Credit of about 15% | Refund the order too |
These are starting points, not findings. Set them so the expected remedy per failure sits below the lost repeat contribution per failure from chapter 2. A credit toward the next order gives a reason to come back, and the Uber study found apologies worked best with a future-trip credit attached. Keep credits tied to failures, or customers learn to complain for them; The First Offer covers how discounts train customers.
A grid can’t foresee the gift that arrived after the birthday or the third failure in a month. For those, give each agent a monthly budget to spend without asking anyone.
Size it from the value at stake. Say an agent handles 150 failure contacts a month, each putting $3.75 of repeat contribution at risk, as in the example in chapter 2: about $560 a month. A budget of a fifth to a third of that, $110 to $190, covers the cases that matter most Derived.
A written grid makes recovery fair. A budget makes it human. You need both.
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Written by Andrew Lauchner, a growth and retention operator for consumer brands. The paid work is one ninety-day Sprint.
This is one chapter of The Kept Promise, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.