One of the oldest sayings in the business world is “Customer service is King”. It’s as true now as it was when they were building the pyramids in Egypt. You simply are not getting around this basic fact of business.
Many may try, but much like how father time catches up to us all, poor customer service catches up to all businesses who don’t focus on that aspect of their business. My last post dealt with how customer service can lead to higher profits, yet the same Zendesk funded study unearthed this grim statistic as well:
“95% negatively change their buying behavior (stop buying, switch companies, etc.) after a bad customer service experience with a small business“. YIKES. That hurts! I speak from experience, because early on in my business I learned many tough lessons.
Even though I had the best of intentions, I sometimes dropped the ball. And when you drop the ball, what you are really doing is losing a suitcase full of money. Money that the customer would have spent with you, but instead will now spend with your competitors.
If you like to keep your competition in business, provide poor customer service. Your company will shrink, and theirs will grow. If on the other hand you want to put them out of business, be known as the KING OF CUSTOMER SERVICE. Your competition won’t be able to keep up, then will soon find another line of business to get into.
Customers choose to work with a small business BECAUSE they EXPECT better customer service. This is why you don’t need to be a franchise to be successful in the cleaning industry. It actually WORKS AGAINST YOU to be known as a big company! But the takeaway is the smaller, lesser known business BETTER DELIVER.
Remember, 95% give their business to someone else when they have a bad customer service experience. That means only 5% will keep a bad cleaning company around. So while it may be a lot of extra work to make that customer happy, the alterative is not having that customer at all! The choice is easy. Go the extra mile! If you want to learn more about how to do that, check out how to resolve customer complaints in nine steps.
[…] After reading the study I did a post on one fact that can lead to higher profits. Then the next post dealt with the other side of the same coin, which is how poor customer service will get you fired. […]