You may be asking what is the connection between customer service and business success? In this rapidly changing environment, AI, the internet and other evolving technologies are rapidly changing the way business is conducted. This is negatively impacting many businesses and to address this quality customer service remains of paramount importance.
Business Survival Guide in an article entitled – Top 5 Reasons Why Customer Service Is Vital to Business Success indicated that ” Customer service is the key to success for any business. It is understood from research that 93% of loyal customers are likely to make repeat purchases from a business that offers excellent customer service, and repeat customers return better on investment than any other area by 140%.”
Customer Service and Business Competitiveness
Today’s companies have to strategize to survive the impacts of covid 19, the global marketplace and a rapidly changing landscape. There is therefore an urgent need for them to reinvent themselves, accelerate digital transformation, establish cost structures that help them to remain in business and introduce agility into all their operations. The small business owners have to be researchers looking clinically at what is happening in their internal and external environments with a view to revisiting their products, service and the many systems they have in place. They must continually review and improve the system in place to ensure quality customer service. HubSpot Annual State of Service Report 2022 indicated that:
“Heading into 2022, customer expectations and experiences continue to be key determinants of brand and company loyalty, with consistent preferences for self-service, personalization, and real-time resolutions. What was once considered differentiation in customer service now resembles table stakes requirements to be competitive with both customer service and customer experience at large.”
HubSpot article entitled Why Customer Service is Important: 16 Data Backed Facts to Know, is a worthy reference on this topic.
What is the solution to the provision of good customer service
Very often customer service training tends to revolve around appeasing the irate customer. Conflict resolution and customer service skills building are emphasized in such training. Businesses need to realize that good customer service not only is a competitive edge, but is key to their business survival and growth. Quality customer service tends to minizine conflict situations and irate customers.
For too long customer service training has targeted mainly frontline staff without recognizing that many of the systematic problems that cause customers to be angry cannot be addressed satisfactorily by mainly training front line staff. Organizations must view customer service delivery as involving a chain of people, responsibilities, systems and procedures across the organization. They are to determine where the bottlenecks are and how they can resolve them while equipping front line staff with the skills necessary to provide quality customer service. They have to recognise that with more and more business being done online there is the need to develop systems to ensure quality customer service to E-customers
Frederick’s Financial and Technical Services developed a customer service workshop to allow staff to view customer service from the point of view of service delivery. As such, in addition to the above-mentioned areas, they will recognize that there is the need to develop a plan to improve the level of service delivery by improving the delivery of the chain of activities needed to be done across internal departments. This will improve customer satisfaction and ensure successful resolution of their complaints. It is, therefore, necessary that not only front-line staff attend but there be representatives of supervisory staff