Still not sure how bad customer service can have a negative impact on your company? Maybe you already know but you think it’s more profitable to deploy your budget on other areas of your business? Read on, you may find out something you never thought of.
The experience your client has when they use your product, service or website is closely linked to the success of your business. The B2P interface is where emotions are felt and decisions made on the basis of those emotions, and consumer actions are committed or discarded on an emotional basis, rather than a rational one. Customer service is the area where the consumer enters into close contact with your company, an intimate zone, where your business can seal the contract with your customer or lose them forever, so there is everything to play for and the stakes are high. In the final analysis it is your decision how much attention you pay to customer service, but here’s a list of possible negative outcomes to look forward to if you don’t give it the attention it deserves.
You will lose clients
Newsflash! This just in, customers appreciate good service! That may not be news to you so here’s a statistic, in bold, to make you think again: 80% of consumers declare themselves unwilling to repeat a consumer transaction if the customer service was deficient, regardless of price.
You won’t just be losing clients, and hence money, in the short term, but in the medium term as well, as you can no longer rely on future sales. And if that client talks your business down, that means who knows how many more sales lost in the future? Do you even want your business to succeed?
Capturing new clients will be more difficult
Do you like entering an empty shop? Don’t you look through the window and think, “Why is no one shopping?” That could be your business if you are not careful. Never underestimate word-of-mouth as a way to grow a business, and the word of your clients has so many more ways to get out into the world than ever before – Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc. – that one slip up can spell disaster.
It’s a drag on your resources
When you take the yacht out at the weekend do you ever choose not to hoist anchor? Do you drive with the handbrake on? Bad customer service can slow you down just as much. Give your people the tools they need to do their job, and you won’t have workers repeating tasks. If you’re still leaving Post-Its on colleagues’ desks it might be time to upgrade your customer service technology. Have you heard of ticketing? Of Help Desk software? Check out what it can do for your business.
You’re going to lose essential feedback
Every time a client is in contact with your company – face-to-face, or online – is an opportunity to collect information – about their needs, their wants, their requirements, their demands – and also to get their feedback on the things you are doing right and things you are doing wrong. Incorporating UX technology into your business strategy is a tactic that can reap great rewards in the future, if you build up accurate customer profiles you can market to them more effectively.
Hostile work environment
You may believe that putting your workers under pressure will produce diamonds, but those people are not inanimate lumps of carbon, but human beings with feelings. The wrong tools, bad protocols, unclear lines of communications or chains of command can all create stress. Stressed employees are not going to treat each other or, more importantly, your client, in the best way. It’s cheaper in the long term to provide your workers with the tools and training they need, rather than have a revolving door employment policy.
Losses
Last but not least, the bottom line, smackeroos, the mighty dollar. If the rest of these hypotheticals don’t bring you out in a cold sweat, this one should. Lost clients, negative publicity, loss of information, slowdowns, task redundancies, unhappy employees will all affect the bottom line. Maybe you’ve gotten away with it until now, but bad customer service will end up costing you money.
Once you know the disastrous consequences of bad customer service for your business remember that there are a variety of ways to help your staff be more efficient, not least of which is to provide a suitable technological platform for them to be able to work to the best of their ability, using the latest ticketing system to provide the care and attention your customers deserve.
Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring. Pandora FMS’s editorial team is made up of a group of writers and IT professionals with one thing in common: their passion for computer system monitoring.
