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Customer Service, the First Step to Satisfaction.

Guest post by: MIchael Daley

Article Overview: Customer service is not customer, serve us! Hold on to your current customers while filling the pipeline for future sales.

Customer Service, the First Step to Satisfaction.

As Benjamin Disraeli told us over 150 years ago, "The Secret of Success is Consistency of Purpose". When we establish a consistent, superior customer service culture, we are able to retain customers and give them an incentive to help us obtain more.

To further reinforce the value of customer service, consider the following as to why customers quit doing business with a company:

1% die, 3% move away, 5% develop other friendships, 9% leave for competitive reasons, 14% are dissatisfied with product, and 68% quit because they perceived an attitude of indifference by the owner, manager, or an employee.

68% stop doing business because they "feel" the company does not value them as a customer. The typical company hears from only 4% of its customers who are dissatisfied. The other 96% just go quietly away and 91% of those customers will never come back. This should not be surprising when you realize that human nature is to avoid adversarial situations and more importantly, customers do have other choices of companies who provide the same products and services.

How often have you walked into a department store or supermarket, only to find that there's no one available to help you? You wait, scream out for help and still not a soul comes forward or worse, when they do, it's with an attitude that you're interrupting their activities, personal phone conversation, water cooler gossip or whatever. You finally evaporate from the premises.

You are a customer just waiting to hand over your hard earned money but frustrated when you realize that no one wants to take it. And the amazing fact is that all of us, even the employees who ignore you at their establishments, hate it when it's done to them!

The customer comes first, period. A culture of customer service is the first step to a satisfied customer. They are the ones who tell others how well we treated them. They are the ones who will come back, time and time again to buy from us. They are the ones who help us expand and who monitor our service. And without them there would be no business.

How much money and time are wasted looking for new customers that could be saved by just holding on to old ones? Customer satisfaction is the foundation for customer loyalty. This can lead to repeat sales and profitable referrals.

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Article Tags: customer service, entrepreneur, marketing, small business



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