Customer service is a key part of growing your business – not just to ensure that customer orders are met but that customers have a positive experience with the company. You want them to feel happy or even wowed by your service, that feeling of being special rather than just another customer number. And there are some solid statistics to back up why good customer service is so important.
How customer services affect a business
Around 80% of people say they will work with or shop from a business again when they receive good customer service. But more telling, over 95% of unhappy customers never complain – but they do tell up to 15 people. This means bad news spreads fast and you may never know what the original issue was or have a chance to put it right.
In terms of poor customer service, around 70% of people will take their business elsewhere due to it. And this includes a lack of human interaction. While using software to handle run of the mill questions is a great way to provide initial good customer service, it is also important to quickly transfer the query to a real person when it goes beyond those basic enquiries.
The social media factor
Social media is a brilliant tool for businesses to spread awareness of what they do, gain customers and build relationships. But it can also work against you when an experience goes wrong.
For example, 87% of people in one Zendesk survey said they shared good experiences with others and a third said they share it with more than five people. On the other hand, 95% of people shared that bad experience and over half said they shared it with more than 5 people.
Customer service reviews on social media are a big factor too. 38% of people will share a good review while 45% will share a bad one – showing customers are keen to highlight when things don’t go right to warn others. And around 70% of people read positive reviews while 63% read negative ones – so people really do pay attention to these reviews. In fact, a massive 88% of people have been influenced by customer service reviews when making a decision.
People also expect businesses to offer customer service on social media. 46% of people say they expect brands to reply to customer queries on Facebook while over one million people view tweets about customer service topics every week. And 80% of these are negative! In fact, 88% of customers say they aren’t as likely to buy from a company who doesn’t answer social media complaints or queries.
Why customer retention matters
At one time, there was a slightly blasé attitude about customer retention – after all, there are always more customers, right? But now we understand the maths better. It can be up to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Loyal customers are worth up to ten times their first purchase and companies that put customer service front and centre make 60% higher profits than rivals that don’t.
Elliott Training has experience with both big and small companies, we have delivered training in customer service to companies like Computershare, BAM PP and a variety of other companies. We feel confident we can help your business and your team to deliver the best customer service possible.
If you’d like to know more about our Customer Service training courses, or any other training program, please contact us through email, phone or contact form.