Get your customer service act together…. Or else..

Posted on Jul 21, 2010 in Records Management News

July 20, 2010 — John Moore

As cus­tomers we have all expe­ri­enced bad cus­tomer ser­vice at some point. The impact of this neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence can range from minor grum­bling to com­pletely walk­ing away from a given brand or prod­uct (ask me why I won’t buy another Ford).

In this poor econ­omy lead­ers often fall back to look­ing at cus­tomer ser­vice as a cost cen­ter and this view­point is com­mon across the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor. The focus shifts to rev­enue gen­er­at­ing activ­i­ties like giv­ing out more park­ing tick­ets or rush­ing prod­ucts to mar­ket. Cus­tomer ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions see reduc­tions in head­count, lower qual­ity tools, and lack of train­ing as the cus­tomer ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion is not seen as the rev­enue generators.

This is clearly not a smart deci­sion in most cases and new research makes it clear that “Cus­tomer Ser­vice Is Cru­cial To Repeat Busi­ness and Prof­itabil­ity“. Accord­ing to this research “61% of Amer­i­cans report that qual­ity cus­tomer ser­vice is more impor­tant to them in today’s eco­nomic envi­ron­ment, and will spend an aver­age of 9% more when they believe a com­pany pro­vides excel­lent ser­vice“. Com­bine this with the fact that more than 80% of con­sumers use rec­om­men­da­tions from friends or fam­ily in the decision-making process and it is easy to under­stand why bad cus­tomer ser­vice can eas­ily lead to poor sales, lost cus­tomers, and ulti­mately to lay-offs and com­pany clo­sure. Did I go too far?

When I talk to orga­ni­za­tions about Social Sup­port Com­mu­ni­ties I like to point out that poor cus­tomer ser­vice costs com­pa­nies $83 Bil­lion annu­ally. $83 bil­lion, that is a num­ber that should catch your eye. As you look at where you are mak­ing cuts in your orga­ni­za­tion weigh the short-term and long-term impact of these cuts. If you do not, you’re going to end up being one of those com­pa­nies being dis­cussed in next years studies.

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case stud­ies and inter­views, or just want to read about The Social Ecosys­tem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.

Read more at: http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=155111771&gid=1854392&type=member&item=25186644&articleURL=http://thejohnfmoore.com/2010/07/20/get-your-customer-service-act-together-or-else/&urlhash=geqd&goback=.gde_1854392_member_25186644