Have you ever wondered how much money has been lost due to poor customer service?  Does it happen where you work? Or do you own your own business and are unaware of your employees’ actions?

This month, my wife and I decided to purchase a new lounge suite.  Being a business owner myself,  I try to visit small, local, businesses first if they have what meets my needs.  As it was early January and the week after Christmas we knew there were a lot of sales going on and we should be able to purchase something at a discounted price. I tried a local store that claimed to have an excellent selection of lounge suits and excellent rates.

I decided to call first so I could talk with someone on the telephone. An answering machine answered the telephone and informed “they were busy with a customer and would return the call.” I did not leave a message. I tried again an hour later and the same scenario. Finally on the third call I left a message stating “I wonder how many customers you have lost due to no response.” I did not leave any contact information. Later that day I decide to drive to the store since it was only a few miles from my home. When I arrived at the store, I find out the store is not open at all. It was closed for the week!

To say the least I did not purchase a lounge suite from this store, nor will I purchase from them in the future. I did send them a letter notifying them of situation that occurred and how I could help them improve on their services.  I didn’t receive any response which I guess correlates with their customer service values.

What do you think this cost that company?  I spent approximately NZ$4,000 on my suite, but was I the only customer that tried to contact them that week? Probably not. Being one of a few local stores to have the services and items they claim to carry, there were probably other inquiries and potential customers went elsewhere.

This company had an opportunity to be the best source for suites in the area.  Being a local company, they had the opportunity to show their customer they were “the shop” for all of their furniture needs with the home town appeal. I much prefer to buy from a local company than one of the bigger firms when their customer service is the personal touch. All of us want the personal touch when dealing with companies and I believe the smaller business has the greatest opportunity to apply and show they care.

Customer service is so important, no matter whether you are big or small. People want to buy from companies they know who will take care of them but also care about them. It is not all about the company but it is all about the customer and what you do for them! Take care of your customers everyday as if it were their birthday! Do we not try to be nice to people on their birthdays if we are aware?

Think about the last time you had a negative buying experience.  Did it take forever for your call to be
answered?  Did an e-commerce site fail to respond to your email query?  Were you left with a good first impression?
 
Negative buying experiences are almost always linked to poor customer service.  Good customer service is essential for all businesses and giving it shouldn’t be seen as an extra.  It isn’t difficult to provide if you follow a few basic rules:
 
1.  Commit to quality customer service. 

Everyone in your company needs to be devoted to creating a positive and memorable experience to your customers.  Always aim to exceed customers’ expectations…may be even under-promise and over-deliver.  Think what impression that would leave on your customers.
 
2.  Always (and I mean ALWAYS) provide what you promise.

Fail to do this and you’ll lose creditability straight away…and possiblty the customer as well.  If you promise
to provide an estimate within 48 hours, get the quote out within 48 hours!  I have lost count of the people and businesses that don’t keep their promises and I am sure you can relate to these types of annoying experiences.  If you can’t keep your promise, at least have the courtesy to let your customer know before-hand.  They will appreciate this. 

Recently our swimming pool’s salt chlorinator packed up just before our relatives arrived from the UK.  Our regular pool service provider promised to fix it before the Christmas (and our summer holiday) break.  Days went by and no sight of any repair.  After 4 telephone messages later, I gave up and left them an “assertive” message advising them I will no longer deal with them.
 
3.  Listen to your customers

Be a sponge…your business may depend on it.  Try to learn as much as you can about your customers so you can tailor your service approach to their needs (not yours!) and their buying habits.  Listen attentively to their concerns and complaints…they will be doing you a favour if you can correct the problem before you run out of customers!

We regularly send our post job surveys to establish how we could improve our service.  You could do the same by offering a small incentive for your customers to return the survey.
 
4.  Know your products

Conveying knowledge about your products and services will help you win your customers’ trust and confidence.  Try to anticipate the types of questions your customers will ask.
 
5.  Focus on making customers, not sales

Salespeople often, especially those being paid commission, focus on volume instead of the quality of the sale.
Remember, that keeping a customer is often more important than closing the sale.  Research clearly shows that it costs much more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.
 
6.  Don’t leave customers waiting

Repairs, call backs and emails need to be handled with a sense of urgency.  Most customers want immediate resolution and if you give it them, you’ll probably win their repeat business.  Research shows that 95% of dissatisfied customers will do business with a company again if their complaint is resolved on the spot.

We have a policy that insists that customer emails and calls are responded to within 4 hours. 

Your customer service level is a significant measure of how well (or how bad) you serve your customers. Thus, it is a crucial determinant of how well your business will do - particularly how good you are at retaining customers and generating repeat business. Indirectly, it also contributes to your referral business - how well you serve existing customers will influence their inclination to refer you to their friends, family and acquaintances.

The following are five ways by which you can test your customer service level. This list is not exhaustive, but this should give you a fair idea of how good you are at serving your customers.

Can you readily fill orders through your inventory?
If you have great customer service level, then you should easily be able to fill your customer orders. You should keep careful note of what your customers order and whether you have the item they are requesting at the time you receive the order. If you are almost always “out of stock,” then you are failing to serve your customers the best way possible.

In a business with diverse number of products, if you are able to fill the order for approximately 95% of the time then you are doing fine. If you are a business that offers only one product, 100% fulfilment of normal orders (barring abnormally large orders) should be your goal.

Can you deliver your customers’ orders in time?
Another factor that you should measure to test your customer service level is the efficiency of your service or how fast you are able to deliver the product or service which has been ordered. If you are almost always missing your target delivery dates, then your customer service delivery chain needs major work.

You should compute the proportion of customer orders that have been delivered on time to the total number of customer orders. This calculation should be time-bounded. For instance, for a month’s total number of orders, what percentage has been delivered on time? If you register that 95% of the time, your customers receive their order at the designated delivery date, then your business is doing fine.

Can you successfully resolve your customers concerns?
For great customer service, you need to respond to your customers’ inquiries and resolve their concerns. A simple way of testing this would be to measure the proportion of the number of customer inquiries that have been effectively resolved to the total number of customer inquiries received.

Do you respond quickly to your customers’ mails/emails and phone calls?
How fast you respond to customers is another means of measuring your customer service level. If you are able to respond to your customers within 24 hours (less is even better) of receiving their call, correspondence or email, then you are doing great.

Do you pass according to your customers?
Finally, your customers themselves can tell you whether you pass or fail when it comes to fulfilling their needs. You can actually conduct a customer survey. The survey should focus on customer service issues so you can measure how well you are able to serve your customers from these customers’ point of view.