Almost all businesses consider customer satisfaction quite important – it is present in their mission statements. However, the way a business handles customer support has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line and this impact is much higher than anybody can realize.
A recent study suggests the value of customer experience and shows that delivering outstanding customer service gives high returns. It also suggests that the best way to attract new customers and retain existing ones is by providing a consistently positive customer experience.
A business must find a way to stand out from the crowd in the competitive market. If the support is efficient, fast and reliable, it certainly affects the company’s bottom line in a positive manner, though not visible directly. Customer service teams who are looking for ways you improve client satisfaction require resources to quickly resolve their customer concerns. They should also be aware of how customer service affects the business reputation and profitability.
Here are some of the ways customer service impacts the bottom-line results:
1. It Creates Reputation
When your product or service has lived its lifespan, the company’s reputation and customer support still live. If the reputation is good, it’s great! However, customers are likely to remember their bad customer service experiences more than the positive ones. This means a negative image is harder to change.
The book ‘Understanding Customers’ states that 12 positive experiences are necessary to make up for one negative one.
2. It Creates the Image of Your Business
A company’s customer service represents the entire business. Whether you like it or not, a customer assumes that if your support is good, the product or service is good too and vice versa. This requires that you, as a business, adopt this attitude and work on your customer service just as you would do on your product or sales.
3. People Like Being Treated With Care
Customers are humans and not machines so emotions come into play. They like being cared for and treated with courtesy and respect. If you appreciate them and give importance to their thoughts and concerns, they are more likely to put their faith in your business.
4. It’s a Profitable Business Strategy
Word-of-mouth is undoubtedly an effective marketing strategy. Your customers speaking positively about your business can work more than the most powerful marketing team. The latest trend is advertising the standards of your company’s customer satisfaction. Using testimonials, ratings and reviews is the perfect way to show your leads how much you care for your clients. Customers singing your praises on your own would really work wonders for your business.
5. It Makes Lives Easier
Reducing the time and effort customers spend to contact you makes it easier for them to do business with you. You can add contact forms on the website and equip the app with customer service tools that everyone would appreciate. Make your phone number easy to find and come up with a FAQ page. Try and make the interaction opportunity accessible and you will ultimately lead them to purchase.
6. Retention is Beneficial
Retaining your existing customers cost your company lesser than attracting new ones. Loyal customers are as much as ten times their initial purchase, but this can work only when you give priority to customer satisfaction. The cost of getting new clients – time, money and effort for a service-based business can be huge. On the other hand, a customer sticking with you means much reduced cost in the long run.
7. Customers Always Have Alternatives
Undervaluing your customers is quite risky because there always exists a competitor who values them. A report shows that as much as 78% of customers back out of a transaction because of low-quality customer support. In this global marketplace, you stand a risk to lose the business if you don’t have the right tools to make it easy doing business with you.
8. It Directly Affects Conversion Rates
You may have put a lot of effort into driving traffic to your business. But what is the use if you are not able to convert the traffic into sales? Turning somebody from consideration to commitment requires a lot and good customer support is an important factor in this regard.
9. Satisfied Customers Spend More
A study shows that customers who had a satisfactory experience or whose expectations were met spent around 140% more than those who had a negative customer experience. Members reporting higher level of satisfaction have a far better chance of being your customer a year later than those who had a poor customer support experience.
10. It’s More Expensive to Treat Dissatisfied Customers
Resolving concerns of unhappy customers can be costlier, particularly when they demand extensive agent support. Whenever the customer returns the product, requests a refund or contacts the support, it costs the company.
11. Unhappy Customers Spread Negativity
Social media platforms make it easy for dissatisfied customers to reach out millions of potential clients easily. Unhappy customers tend to share their negative experience not only with their friends and contacts but with the entire world through social media sites, affecting your bottom line in a negative way.
Business leaders have always known the value of customer service for business sales and profits but it is difficult to measure the effect. Customer support teams at a business can use the resources and knowledge to drive customer satisfaction and deliver a consistently positive customer experience.
No single support agent has the answers to all concerns, but the team can resolve the issue collectively by using the company’s resources to boost customer satisfaction. By understanding how customer service impacts the company’s bottom line, businesses can prepare themselves to compete and win.
