The Golden Rule of Customer Service is no longer enough

We all have customers. They are the lifeblood of your business. So how does your business measure up when it comes to providing a great customer experience?

Here are some facts about customer service:

• Customers tell an average of 9 people about good experiences – around 16 people (almost twice as many people) are told about poor experiences.
• 86% of customers stop doing business with a company because of bad customer service.
• 9 out of 10 customers say they would pay more to ensure a superior customer experience.
• 91% of unhappy customers will not do business with you again.
• Resolve a complaint in the customer’s favour and they will do business with you again 70% of the time.
• 80% of companies say they deliver ‘superior customer service – 8% of customers think these same companies deliver ‘superior’ customer service.
• 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.
• 67% of customers hang up the phone out of frustration because they could not talk to a real person.
• 60% of customers will try a new brand or company for a better service experience.
• For every customer who bothers to complain, 26 other customers remain silent.
• It is between 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one.
• It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.
• 58% of customers perform online research about the products and services that they are considering purchasing.
• By far the most requested improvement from customers was ‘better human service’.

(source: Help Scout)

According to this research the top two reasons for losing customers are that customers feel poorly treated and that there was failure to solve a problem in a timely manner. These days customers are choice rich and time poor so it’s no wonder that investing in customer service training is now taking on such importance. Here’s our recommended CORE© approach that we provide in our training to deliver a memorable customer experience:

Consistency is a must. Your customers’ experience cannot and must not be left to chance.
Organisation is essential to make sure everyone is prepared to deliver what your customers expect.
Responsibility needs to be given to employees to resolve complaints in a timely and appropriate way.
Excellence needs to be uppermost in employee’s minds at all times.

Our customer excellence training goes far beyond being nice to people. We work with companies to help them define their own customer service standards. Employees are important but customer experience needs to take into account processes and products too. Everything needs to knit together. From a customer’s point of view, everything needs to be easy and seamless.

Intuitively we all know great customer service makes business sense. Engaged, confident and skilled employees also up-sell and cross-sell products and services to meet customer needs which will add value to your bottom line. They become advocates and ambassadors for your business. Skilled employees identify their own traits, perceptions and habits yet set these aside to avoid making assumptions about customers’ needs and wants.

Providing excellent customer service is an attitude, a value that comes from within. Employees with the right values need to be recruited and then trained with the skills and knowledge to meet and exceed the needs of your customers. Seeing how your training links in with your employees and business measures is essential to get that all important balanced view. Our diagram provides you with a framework to help shape your thinking on how this can be achieved.

In times gone by the golden rule of customer service was enough – treat customers how you would like to be treated. However in today’s choice rich, time poor, fast paced online world we all need to raise our game and adopt the platinum rule – treat customers how they’d like to be treated.

For more information of our creating excellent customer service training or for a free consultation please contact Paul Beesley, senior consultant at Beyond Theory business training and coaching: 01604.212505 and paul@beyondtheory.co.uk