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Customer service separates you from your competitors, for good or bad. If you’re a smaller business in an industry with lots of competition, quality customer service may be the difference between doing well and closing your doors. You may get hung up on the details of running your business, but you should never overlook customer service.
Here are ten customer service facts and stats from The Hartford’s Small Biz Ahead to think about.
- 80% of Americans believe smaller businesses put a greater emphasis on customer service than larger ones.
Customer service is one reason why people will pay more to use a smaller business. They value saving time and preventing aggravation. They will to pay a premium to a company they trust, and that trust needs to be earned. Consistently good customer service can keep people coming back. Keeping a customer is a lot less expensive than generating a new one.
- People will let you and others know if your customer service is bad.
You may be concerned about online reviews, but complaining is a long tradition. A clay tablet in the British Museum from about 1750 BC has the first known customer service complaint inscribed on it. An unhappy customer received the wrong grade of copper.
- Consumers are twice as likely to share poor customer service experiences than good ones.
Bad reviews now travel farther and faster than clay tablets ever could. Customer Service Facts and Stats ha
ve shown that online reviews can spread quickly thanks to search engines and social media.
- 97% of people read local business reviews
- 94% of respondents in one survey stated they’ve avoided a company because of a bad online review
- About 80% of consumers changed their minds about a recommended purchase after reading a negative online review
- 93% state online reviews affect their purchasing decisions
- If someone’s researching your business, if they see three negative pieces, your chances of losing their interest are about 59%
- Customer Service Week, nationally recognized for the first time in 1992, is the first full week of October.
It’s an opportunity to show employees and customers the importance of customer service. Customers could receive gifts, and your best customer service providers could be given recognition and bonuses. As good as extra attention is, customer service week really should be every week if you want your business to do well consistently.
- 63% of survey respondents stated they’ve stopped using a business due to a bad customer service experience.
This shouldn’t surprise you. You’ve probably done the same. While some of us are more forgiving than others, none of us want our time wasted. If we feel we’re not valued or taken for granted, we’ll spend our dollars elsewhere.
- By one estimate, $41 billion is lost annually by U.S. companies due to poor customer service.
How much have you lost? You probably don’t know. Unless the disappearance of a longtime customer results in you reaching out to them or a customer complaint reaches you, lousy customer service may be hurting your business more than you realize.
- It’s estimated that for each complaint you get, 26 other unhappy customers remain silent.
Every customer complaint is bad news, but it could be much worse. Complaints are like icebergs. You only see a tiny fraction of them.
- On average, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.
Given how quickly people drop business due to bad customer service, you’ll be lucky if you have 12 more chances to prove yourself.
- It’s estimated customers manage 85% of the relationship with businesses without interacting with a human.
If you’ve invested in technology to help manage customer service, it better be good, since you rely on it so much. That bad experience that turns off a customer could be a malfunctioning chatbot or a web page that doesn’t load. If interactions with people have become rare, there’s less room for error.
- Customer service affects employee retention.
You can lose customers and revenue due to bad service, but it can also impact employee morale and retention. Do you want to work for someone who doesn’t care about the quality of their service or their relationships with customers? Good employees don’t like to provide bad service, but they will if that’s all your company is equipped to give. They’ll also probably start looking for another job because you can’t get much job satisfaction from giving customers the runaround, lying to them, or constantly apologizing for problems.
Take the Next Step: Contact Tony Liu
Extremely bad customer service could potentially lead to litigation. If you have a contract with another business, you’re not living up to your obligations, and your customer is losing money as a result, that’s a situation that could lead to legal action. Let’s work together to prevent that from happening, but if it has, I can provide you the legal counsel and representation your business needs.
To learn more about the legal dangers of bad customer service and how to avoid them, contact our office at (714) 415-2007 to schedule a consultation with an experienced California business litigation attorney or you can do so through our online portal.
We hope these ten customer service facts and stats helped you to improve your business.
