Serving Customers When Pain Is Involved

The Cincinnati Zoo is forced to shoot a rare gorilla that potentially threatened a boy who had fallen into the gorilla cage. Disney World lost a 2-year old guest to an alligator in an on-property lagoon. A massive hurricane put the local utility company in its bull’s eye. All these tragedies involve customer pain. And, all such incidents risk leaving customers with a foul taste about the business in the context regardless of their culpability.

While some glitches are rare massive tragedies, m...