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The Importance of Customer Service

Guest post by: Gary Jeffress

Article Overview: Gary explains why the single, most important, controllable factor in the success of any business is its level of customer service, or how your customer perceives the business - and discusses how to you might focus more emphasis on this area within your business.

The Importance of Customer Service

The single, most important, controllable factor in the success of any business is its level of customer service, or how your customer perceives the business. It’s not your marketing effort; it’s not your sales team. It’s not your product; it’s not your branding, your location, your website or your signage. All of these things are most certainly important and all of them can affect the bottom line, but your customer service ability is the greatest determining factor between having a thriving, profitable business or a struggling one. This of course is OK for an established business, given we mentioned terms like ‘sales team’ and ‘branding’. However, many businesses don’t have that ‘sales team’ or ‘marketing budget’. In Australia a ‘small business’ is considered a privately owned organisation with more than 20 and less than 200 employees, by the ABS. The figures last year showed that 96% of businesses in Australia are small businesses. There are just as many micro-businesses and home based businesses that rely on ‘customer service’ too. While it’s apparent most people do not like confrontation with a grumpy customer, I feel it’s the best opportunity to learn about your business... for both parties. I would much rather have a person yelling / venting at me because I will learn about the things that this customer does not like, that I am able to control. In my customer service toolkit course, I arm people with strategies to deal with people like this. Your customer also learns about you and your business through this experience. They will learn how you deal with adversity and whether or not you and your staff and systems are authentic. We’ve heard many times that a person will tell others about a poor service experience they have had. But in my experience I promise, they will tell more people about the positive outcome you and your company provided in the face of a problem you solved for them. Often, even if you don’t fix it immediately but treat them with respect and have a view to a favourable result, they will tell that story way longer than any other story.

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Article Tags: authentic, business opportunity, business success, customer service, importance, importance of customer service



Related Forum Posts
Re: Service Or Product? - I agree with starting a Service-based Business in the economy. Here is what I think is critical: 1. Researching that your Service business has a market. 2. Marketing the Service with as much leverage as possible. 3. Product-izing the Service (aka Package Expert Knowledge). This will only help elevate you as "the" expert in your niche and make you accessible to people in different price points.
Marketers, Learn What You Can, Cannot Control Online - I am a Customer Service Representative in my company so naturally every once and a while I get angry customers fed up with my companies policies. Oh! I remember one day on my way home from school I was walking by a gas station and there was a man with a huge cardboard sign outside a small car mechanic business telling people not to go there because they are crooks. I am pretty sure they lost tons of business. I know my mama kept away from there after I told her about it. I found it pretty funny. I wonder if the guy got arrested or fined though....
Wearing different hats in Business - I have a business that produces beautiful custom rugs for home and business environments. Different hats that I'm wearing... Rug Fabrication - 10 [i:21cr28m8](partially outsourced to an outfit here in the US)[/i:21cr28m8] Customer Service / Sales - 8-10 Bookkeeping - 1 Marketing - 6 Website development - 5 [i:21cr28m8](mainly outsourced)[/i:21cr28m8] SEO, SEM - 6-8 Accounting - [i:21cr28m8](outsourced)[/i:21cr28m8]
Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
Who Said Twitter Doesn't Work...? - Last month, the BBC World Service programme, The Strand, featured 21 year-old Icelandic pianist/composer Olafur Arnalds. Arnalds achieved extraordinary success through his internet-led project to compose 7 tunes in 7 days, post them on his website and then post links to it via TWITTER. As a result his website got thousands of visitors eager to listen to his music, catapulting him to fame and bringing his music to the attention of the BBC, who featured an interview with him on the World Service programme, The Strand! So who says Twitter doesn't work? (HINT: It does help if you have something uniquely your own that other people want to get hold of...)


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