Posted By: Jo Ann Joy In: Customer Service To really outshine your competition, you must be customer-focused. A customer-focused company looks first at the best ways to serve its customers before it considers profits. You listen to customers and acting upon their needs.
It pays to please customers, because they will choose you over competitors even if they have to pay more to obtain your products or services. The following statistics show that companies can charge more for excellent service:
1. Most customers will spend at least 10 percent more for the same product with better service. 2. When a customer receives bad service, he or she tells at least 20 people. 3. When a customer receives good service, he or she tells up to 10 people. 4. If customers’ complaints are handled quickly and pleasantly, at least 80 percent of customers will repurchase from that company. 5. If the service is bad, at least 90 percent of customers will not return. 6. If your employees provider take the time to establish a relationship and create a rapport with the customer, almost all transactions were completed faster and more efficiently.
You must close the gap between service and customer expectations. This creates a tremendous opportunity for your company to do better than your competitors and gain market share. You can only close the gap if you understand your customers’ needs. That means you must communicate with your customers. These are some characteristics of a customer-focused company:
1. Reward staff when they achieve customer satisfaction. 2. Managers support staff in doing their jobs well, and the staff focuses on customer satisfaction. 3. Employees are promoted and rewarded for good customer service skills. 4. Emplyees are trained to provide outstanding customer service. 5. All employees know their customers and greet them by name. 6. Employee feedback is regularly sought and considered on key customer issues before decisions are made. 7. Regular tracking of customer satisfaction is part of the business. 8. Customer satisfaction results are brought to every employee’s attention at each level, from senior management to production workers. 9. Every department considers the results and has input on how to improve the results. 10. Departments with the highest customer service scores are acknowledged and rewarded.
Never underestimate the importance of ongoing, regular follow-up. You must constantly seek feedback from your customers, employees, and anyone who comes in contact with your customers. If management doesn’t continually seek feedback, then it risks the “gap.” Management must know without any doubt that their perception and the customers’ perception of good service are the same.
Comments
Posted by: Staff Editor
This is a great article that shows the importance of good customer service. In the past, I have given a company more business because of their good customer service. For those companies that I have received bad customer service, I have definitely told many people about the horrible service. More companies should explain to their employees the overall importance of customer service, and employees should be rewarded for their efforts.
Posted by: Michelle Brown
I would define “customer-focused strategy” as a view on business that puts customers at the center of business decisions. Doing this requires staying in touch with your customers through actionable marketing research. Unfortunately, everyone thinks they can throw together a survey these days. The problem is that measuring customer satisfaction is more a science than many think. To determine the impact and real importance of the key drivers of customer satisfaction requires a comprehensive knowledge of multivariate statistical modeling. There are a number of sites that discuss using analytics to measure customer satisfaction and offhand, http://www.themarketinganalysts.com/Customer_Satisfaction_Research.html provides some pretty good ideas of what is involved.
Posted by: Steve B
Your points were well made: train and reward employees, gather customer feed-back and react.
