How to fulfill an unconditional service guarantee?

Customers should not need a lawyer to explain the "ifs, ands and buts" of a guarantee because ideally there should not be any conditions; a customer is either satisfied or is not.

If a company cannot guarantee all elements of its service unconditionally, it should unconditionally guarantee the elements that it can control. Airlines cannot promise on-time arrival, but they can guarantee passengers will be satisfied with airport waiting areas, service on the ground and in the air, and food quality.

A guarantee focus a company more on customers. Encourage the customers on complaints where the failure occur. It a sure way to discover cracks in your service or products and avoid customer defection. Companies should offer a guarantee so mild that never invoked. The service guarantee should be resonable.

Eg: At one point, Domino's Pizza promised "delivery within 30 minutes or the pizza is free." Management found that customers considered this too generous; they felt uncomfortable accepting a free pizza for a mere 5- to 15- minute delay and did not always take advantage of the guarantee. Consequently, Domino's changed the guarantee to "delivery within 30 minutes or $3 off," and customers appear to consider this commitment reasonable

A customer who is already dissatisfied should not have to jump through hoops to invoke a guarantee; dissatisfaction is only exacerbated when the customer has to talk to different people, fill out forms, make telephone calls, send in written proof of purchase with a full description of the events, wait for a written reply, and go somewhere else to see someone to verify all the preceding facts, and so on.

Similarly, customers should not be made to feel guilty about invoking the guarantee. A company should encourage unhappy customers to invoke the guarantee, not put up roadblocks to keep them from speaking up.