Imagine you are enjoying dinner at a high-end restaurant, almost finished with the appetizer, when you notice a long strand of hair mixed into the food. What would you expect the restaurant to do?

Well, this really happened.

In this solo episode of Doing CX Right, host Stacy Sherman shares that experience, plus a second restaurant mistake that led to a very different outcome. Both businesses had a chance to recover, but only one response made her feel taken care of and more willing to forgive.

Stacy explains why the moments after a service issue can matter more than the issue itself, and why correcting the problem is not the same as making it right. She also connects both stories to Qualtrics XM Institute research, featured in episode 210 with Isabelle Zdatny, showing how customer emotion influences forgiveness, trust, recommendations, and loyalty.

This episode helps leaders rethink service recovery as a customer retention strategy, not a simple correction.

What You Will Learn

• Why correcting a mistake and making it right are two different actions.

• What Qualtrics research reveals about the business impact of emotion when an experience does not go as expected.

• Why the memory customers carry from a difficult moment can influence whether they return or choose a competitor.

• What generous recovery looks like in practice, and why one small gesture can influence the customer's next decision.

• How one phrase can shift the conversation from care to blame.

• How to assess whether employees are equipped to protect loyalty during difficult customer moments.

Have a question or thoughts to share? Leave a voice message: https://www.speakpipe.com/StacySherman

Learn more at DoingCXRight.com and subscribe to the newsletter for more actionable strategies.

Are you struggling to turn satisfied customers into brand loyalists? Discover how to shift from merely impressing to creating customer obsession in this episode of Doing CX Right.

Join host Stacy Sherman and guest Jon Picoult as they reveal how crafting standout experiences can accelerate ROI growth. They explain innovative ways to build emotional connections that turn customers into vocal advocates. Plus, learn how prioritizing your current customer base can accelerate revenue growth and enhance your competitive advantage. Don't miss out. Listen now to learn how to transform customer satisfaction into deep brand commitment.

Learn more at DoingCXRight.com and subscribe to the newsletter for more actionable strategies.

Book time with Stacy Sherman here.

Most business leaders track traditional metrics such as NPS, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and average response time. They are, however, overlooking the single factor that reliably predicts customer return, referrals, increased spending, and the willingness to forgive a mistake: emotion. This episode focuses on proving the cost of this emotion gap and detailing the actions leaders must take now to achieve lasting success.

Stacy Sherman spoke to Isabelle Zdatny at Qualtrics XM Institute about in-depth research that reveals what separates companies that earn customer loyalty from those that keep losing it without knowing why. Their conversation provides leaders with clear, actionable strategies for measuring and managing the emotional experience to drive measurable business outcomes.

What you will learn:

• How to identify the one emotion your brand must stand for and turn it into a metric your leadership team will act on.

• Why customers with high emotion ratings are exponentially more likely to trust, forgive a mistake, and recommend your brand than any functional metric currently predicts.

• What a four-year longitudinal study of publicly traded companies reveals about the stock performance gap between emotion leaders and emotion laggards.

• Why AI deployed in customer service is eroding trust faster than it is creating efficiency, and what to do instead.

• How one company stopped measuring satisfaction entirely, created a proprietary metric tied to executive compensation, and changed how their entire organization operated.

• What behavioral signals inside your existing call recordings and chat transcripts are already telling you about how customers feel that post-transaction surveys will never capture.

Learn more at DoingCXRight.com and subscribe to the newsletter for more actionable strategies.

Book time with Stacy here.