Better service through accepting mistakes?

Just like people reveal their fundamental characteristics under stress, so do services. Giving feedback to service provider creates a conflict that reveals how well the service culture is understood and cultivated in a company.

Being passionate about services I usually tell if there is something wrong - because I care. Regular customer do not usually care - they just change company. Giving feedback has offered a front row seat in observing how is feedback taken. Companies operate through individuals and their defence mechanisms usually determine how feedback is received. -This is where service culture steps in.

If a company does not take a stand on 1) how feedback should be received, 2) how and within what limits the situation is settled and 3) how the feedback is eventually processed, the employee falls back on ones own defenses or in best case builds on the self confidence, wits and positivity.

Katja Okkonen writes in Helsingin Sanomat about poor service in the article Saitko surkeaa palvelua? Tästä se johtuu.  She points out that following rules and regulations diligently and being afraid of mistakes often creates poor user experiences:
-Tuulikki Juusela calls finnish culture a culture of regulations, which could be interpreted as bureaucracy. Hiding behind rules and regulations has become common and common sense is used less and less.
- It is easy for me to agree when Juusela assumes that finnish people have gained a significant fear of mistakes. We are highly cautious for our manager or coworker to give negative feedback. Current economical turbulence has also made the fear of losing one's work very real. When customer gives negative feedback, the fear of mistake and fear of losing one's work is combined and that can create a strong need to be right.
-Janne Löytänä has written that the best way to receive negative feedback is to response promptly and personally. Löytänä further reminds that compensation is actually cheap marketing for a company. If a company is able to turn negative experience to a satisfactory, the customer becomes a 15 times more loyal than a regular customer - and that must create a lot of good reputation.
-While Juusela mentions that Finland is a true self service culture with all possible technical innovations to support it, Camilla Reinboth takes another perspective reminding that engineering culture might also lead thinking that errors in product can be fixed when they occur. With services employees need to know how to deal with mistakes before they occur.