It's also the month when my baseball team is once again watching the post-season instead of participating in it.
But I digress.
Since it is indeed the month for Halloween, I thought I'd share this article I came across which touches on some "scary" facts pertaining to customer service.
Welcome to the October issue of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips from JDK Marketing Communications Management.
Rod Jones, writing online in The Marketing Site -- Click here: Click here: Some Really Scary Facts -- notes that:
• Only 25% to 30% of a company’s customers are truly satisfied. That means that 70% of your existing customers can be easily lured away by your competitors.
• 96% of unhappy customers will never tell you about their dissatisfaction. They will simply walk over to your competitors at the slightest whim. That means that for every one customer who complains, 26 will remain forever silent.
• 91 % of unhappy customers will never purchase from you again!
• 70% of the reason why customers left companies had nothing whatsoever to do with the product… The reason for switching to your competitor was because of poor service.
• The average business loses between 10% and 30% of its customers each year largely due to poor service.
• It costs 8 times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.
But here’s something positive….
• 70% of complaining customers will definitely do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor.
Like so many challenges in life and in business, the solutions to even the most complex issues are simple in their pure concept. Let’s face it. What customers really want is to have a truly memorable experience every time that they engage with us.
Regretfully, in the world that we live in and in the nature of many of the people that we employ, customer ‘Wow!” experiences just don’t happen by chance.
To actually deliver ‘world class’ service, the entire organization needs to understand the full implication of customer service and service delivery and how each and every employee plays a significant role in the process. Change management and on-going training are the essential elements necessary to inculcate organizational focus on customer service.
To be truly effective, customer service can't be something your business tries to do in addition to its other business operations. Rather, customer service excellence needs to be at the heart of everything your business does. If creating memorable customer experiences is key to your sustainability (which it is), making sure such experiences are standard across your company needs to be a strategic imperative.
Great customer experiences encompass every aspect and area of your business - from the advertising, marketing and branding, to the way your customers interact with your product or service and how they are treated by your staff.
Focused customer service research and training will certainly deliver improvements to your customers' experiences with your business, but to get the full benefit, you need to build customer service into your business strategy.
In five years’ time how will we be able to identify those companies that have truly grasped the implications of the ‘Customer Service Ethos’?
That’s easy. They will be the companies still in business…
Check us out again the first Tuesday of next month for another haunting edition of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips.
Joel Kweskin
http://www.jdkmarketing.biz/
joel@jdkmarketing.biz
704.846.4835 office
704.575.8850 mobile
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