A statistical review to help you rethink your customer service

by | Feb 11, 2014 | Businesses | 0 comments

This article from the Business 2 Community provides a succinct way for you and your team to think about whether or not you’re providing excellent customer service. It may even inspire you to change what you’re currently doing or give you new ideas for your employee training programs. You’re probably already familiar with many of these concepts, but here is a summary.

  • In the U.S., 82 percent of consumers say that a poor customer service experience caused them to end doing business with a particular company.
  • Gaining a new customer can cost a company 10 times as much as retaining an existing one.
  • In addition, building a new customer up to spend the same amount with you as the lost customer can cost 16 times as much.
  • Retaining just a fraction more of your customers can result in significantly higher profits.

 You’ll lose customers the more “effort” they have to put into resolving any problems they may have.  Effort includes things like:

  • having to explain the problem more than one time
  • being transferred to other employees while trying to resolve a problem, or
  • having contact with more than one person to resolve the problem.

Nearly two-thirds of customers report this kind of “effort” with a service transaction and the data shows that the more effort a customer has to go through, the more likely he or she is to bolt from your business.

Finally, social media affects our interactions with companies.  The numbers show that…

  • customers are more loyal to the companies they follow on social media.
  • customers who follow your company on social media will spend up to 40 percent more than customers who don’t.
  • social media is becoming the preferred place for customers to resolve service problems. If they don’t, they call, which takes more time and effort on both your part and the customer’s.
  • the number of questions posed to companies via social media sites increased by 30 percent over just one quarter at the end of 2012.

What does knowing these statistics—or being reminded of them—say to you about the present state of your customer service efforts?