The Service Recovery Playbook: Triage, SLAs & Make-It-Right Authority

The sample's average make-right cost is $74 — against an at-risk relationship worth $3,840 in lifetime profit and referrals. A 52-to-1 return on fixing it NOW. Which is why the core move here is pre-authorized spending: the rep who can say yes to $75 on the spot saves the customers that "let me check with my manager" loses while checking.

How it works

• The Triage Board — every complaint logged with a severity that sets the response clock (24h annoyed / 4h at-risk / 1h public-or-major), what it cost to make right, and whether they stayed. The board scores you: on-time rate, spend, save rate
• The Recovery Math — what a saved customer is worth, the recovery return, and the authority table to post at the desk: any rep $75 on the spot, lead $250, owner above — and severity 3 always gets the owner's voice
• The Playbook — sixty seconds of only listening, "you're right, and that's on us" (never "sorry you feel that way"), the fix plus one more thing, and the day-3 follow-up call almost nobody makes — where half the save rate lives

Built for

Whoever answers when things go wrong: service-business offices · restaurants · e-commerce support · property managers · every front desk that's been told to "use your judgment" without being given any authority to use it with.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Severities, clocks, limits and multipliers all yours to edit.