What is the importance of customer service?
When it comes to purchasing most products or services, customers have choices. They make their choices based on a variety of factors, which will vary across demographics. Some shop purely on price, others are willing to pay more for quality, while others choose a product or service because of the prestige or image it portrays about them as customers. One thing all customers can agree on, regardless of what motivates them to buy from a specific company, is that it is tremendously important for them to receive good customer service.
It doesn’t matter if the product is something they need (such as groceries) or something they desire (such as a vehicle), the buying experience can be made seamless, and loyalty can be established by offering good customer service. Conversely, offering poor customer service can turn someone off from ever purchasing from your company again, and some might even go as far as telling their friends and family not to purchase from you. Given the rise in e-commerce, the days where customers only have one or two choices for most products or services in most parts of the country are gone. It isn’t enough to innovate your products or services, you must also innovate your customer experience if you want to maintain a foothold in your industry.
What does good customer service look like?
Above all else, good customer service is habitual. This means that no matter who receives your products or services, no matter their temperament or their issue, they are always treated with kindness, empathy and respect. If a customer is experiencing an issue with your company, they should feel like they are being heard and respected. Your company should make every effort to please the customer, and to find out exactly what a resolution looks like in their eyes. Sometimes, the desired resolution is not possible, and in cases like this, it is important to find an acceptable alternative. Customers should never feel like they are dealing with a faceless, nameless monolith that hides behind rules, regulations or policies to deny service.
Good customer service isn’t limited to just support situations. It is also proactive. If you have company social media, make an effort to respond to your customers and join the conversations they are having about your products or services online. Find ways to get involved in your community, whether it’s through sponsorship of local sports teams or facilities or initiatives. This will improve your image and give customers a positive sentiment of your company.
Good customer service also requires a strong understanding of the products and services your company offers. If customers need support or have questions or concerns, few things are more frustrating than the company that provides the products or services not having any answers for them. Having passion not just for the products or services but for the company as a whole can go a long way towards providing effective solutions to common concerns the public might have.
What does poor customer service look like?
We’ve all experienced poor customer service at one point or another, and in some industries, poor customer service unfortunately might even be the expectation. In these situations, customers feel like a number. They are placed on hold for hours, sometimes multiple times in a single call. In-person, they are met with disengaged, unhelpful or unfriendly staff who couldn’t care less about their issues. When they go online, they see many others have similar issues and that the company basically does nothing to resolve these issues. Appealing to companies with poor customer service is an exercise in futility, as oftentimes, the companies claim there is nothing they can do to resolve the customer’s issues. They use policy or the need to have decisions approved by a manager as a common excuse for their unwillingness to help, and they shut down any attempts to seek a resolution by repeating the same reasoning over and over.
Poor customer service is a self-perpetuating issue, as the more upset a company’s customers become, the more likely they are to lash out at unhelpful or uncaring customer service representatives, which makes the representatives themselves upset and less likely to help other customers. A sense of uselessness sets in among the representatives, as most of their day is spent denying requests for assistance or citing policies that prevent them from helping, which lowers morale. In particularly bad cases, companies outsource their entire customer service department to foreign call centres where employees sometimes work for multiple companies at once and lack any real-world understanding of being a customer of the companies they work for or the context in which they exist in the marketplace.
Even if a company is otherwise a good place to work, or offers high quality products or services, they can take a significant hit to their reputation by offering poor customer service. One only has to look on social media to see what people are saying about a company in this situation to fully grasp the magnitude of the impact that poor customer service can have. It can lead to potential customers forgoing doing business with these companies, which can amount to thousands of dollars in lost business.
Customer service, above all else, has a major impact on whether your company succeeds in the marketplace or becomes one that people actively avoid. By making it a focus and infusing it throughout every customer touchpoint, you stand to benefit where your competition fails.
