No matter how good your product or service is, it can only get your business so far. The quality of experiences and customer service you provide are what will take you the rest of the way.
You want customers to be flooded with positive feelings whenever they hear, see, or think about your business. You want them to brag about how much your brand cares for its customers.
Customer service is the key to achieving this and more, yet it is so easily neglected by companies when they are deciding which functions to prioritize and pour resources into.
If you are still treating your customer service as an afterthought, here are 20 reasons why you should start caring about it and centering customer’s needs and experiences in every area of your business.
Why Customer Service Is Important?
1. Great customer service lessons problems
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No matter how much you try to prompt issues and tackle them ahead of time, your business is still going to run into some problems now and then.
While you can’t completely eliminate potential customer complaints, having great customer service can lessen the impact of these problems.
When customers are given a proper explanation or detailed information regarding their issues, they will feel heard and cared for. They will see that you are doing your best and trying to rectify the problem, and they will be willing to give you the benefit of doubt.
Rather than taking their business elsewhere in annoyance or escalating the issue publicly for all to see, they will give you an opportunity to resolve their complaints.
As long as customers know that they can come to you with their issues and they will be handled with urgency and diligence, they will fall in love with your brand and be inclined to keep patronizing you.
2. It helps generate valuable feedback
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By prioritizing customer service, asking questions, and listening to what your customers have to say you gain insights into what they think about your product or service.
You will be able to generate fresh ideas on how you can improve your offerings from the perspective of the people who use them.
Only a few customers will voice their complaints, the rest will quietly move on to another brand. You can’t fold your hands and wait for your customers to bring their issues to you, you have to interact with them directly to find out if they are experiencing any problems.
You can gather feedback from daily conversations with your clients or use customer surveys, social media, usability tests, email, and contact forms to find out any complaints, comments, or suggestions your customers might have.
3. Customer service contributes to business longevity
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About 20% of small businesses will close their doors in their first year, 50% will fail within five years, and even fewer of them will make it to the 10-year line. The reason for this mostly boils down to an inability to scale, lack of funds, and misinterpretation of market value.
Satisfying your customers can help solve these problems and prevent closure. But a lot of the time, businesses are so focused on other activities required to keep things running that they end up neglecting their customer’s needs.
They believe that if their product is good enough, customers will choose them by default and keep returning for more, but that is hardly ever the case.
If you don’t put your customers at the forefront of your business, you are going to lose them. And without customers, your business will not survive for very long.
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4. It can dramatically increase revenue
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There is a direct correlation between improved customer service and revenue growth. When your company is committed to putting customers first and meeting their needs it will encourage new customers to give you a chance.
As you know, it’s far more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. Providing excellent customer service can also save you from spending a ton of money to convince new people to try your products because it will keep your current customers coming back to buy from you.
When your customers are satisfied, they will preach the gospel of your brand to anyone who can hear and help generate new interest in your products or services. All of these present unique sales opportunities that will positively impact your bottom line.
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5. Happy customers can improve your brand reputation
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Sometimes there’s a disconnect between what you want your business to represent and how people actually see you. Customer service is very influential in shaping your brand reputation and image and ensuring it aligns with the idea you have in your head.
Your customer support and community management teams are the ones who get to communicate with your customers directly. If they are friendly, reliable, and helpful, that is how customers will view your brand and it will build their confidence in your business.
Your customer service team has the power to change or direct the perception of your company. Make sure that they are representing the brand in a way that creates a positive experience for customers.
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6. It gives you competitive advantage
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Chances are you are not the only company doing or selling what you do. Even if you are, it’s not going to last forever.
One way you can set your brand apart from your competitors and become the preferred choice is by providing top-notch customer service. What are the problems that customers have with your competitors’ brands?
Solve those problems and meet their needs before your competitors can and you will get them to switch to your brand. Think of interesting ideas that can help draw customers closer to you and make them feel like you truly care about them, not just their money.
Adding personal touches to your product or service can elevate it in the eyes of the buyer and make their experience more delightful.
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7. Customer satisfaction reduces churn
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Most people stop doing business with brands because of subpar customer service. For every unresolved negative experience a customer has with your brand, it takes several positive experiences to compensate for it.
Not many people will hang around long enough for that to happen, they are just going to churn.
The best thing you can do to stop customers from abandoning you is preventing negative experiences from occurring or resolve them quickly and satisfactorily when they arise.
Treat the people who buy from you or use your services well so they won’t go running into the arms of your competitors to find what they are not getting from you.
Invest in building a highly trained and well-informed customer support team that can see to it that your customers remain happy and will have no reason to leave you.
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8. It boosts customer lifetime value
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Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the total revenue you can expect from a customer throughout the period that they use your service or keep patronizing you.
You can increase this value by providing excellent customer service at every touchpoint and in every interaction that a customer has with your brand.
When your customers have a good experience while buying from you, speaking to your support staff, or trying out your service, they are more likely to come back and purchase again. They will also be more willing to spend higher and higher amounts on your products or services.
They can even share their experience with other people who may decide to try your brand for themselves. This increased confidence in your business can better position you to easily cross-sell and upsell additional offers; all of which will help raise CLV.
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9. Strengthens company culture
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By establishing a commitment to serving your customers and showing them how important they are, you can create a work environment that is powered by a desire to be helpful. Your employees’ willingness to serve will extend beyond customers to their colleagues.
You will have a culture where people are willing to jump in and provide assistance however they can even in departments other than their own.
And when this happens, there will be a simultaneous uptick in productivity, collaboration, and work speed.
Culture is not something that just happens or a thing that can be willed into existence by simply writing it down somewhere, it is something that you practice and work on every day.
If you create a culture that prioritizes being kind, respectful, compassionate, and eager to help, it will rub off on your employees too.
10. It turns customers in brand advocates
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When people buy something from a brand or use a service that offers a beautiful experience, they will happily spread the word about your business. They will recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues, and use their social media pages to share their impressions of your brand.
They will essentially market your company and offerings for free. This is one of the most effective forms of marketing because people are more likely to trust the opinions of other people like them than any advertisement or brand messaging you put out there.
You get to gain new customers, increase sales, and grow your profits without spending any extra money or putting in additional effort just by ensuring your customers are satisfied and cared for.
11. Customer happiness can lower employee attrition rate
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Your employees are paying attention to how you treat the people who buy from you and they will eventually start to treat your business the same way.
If you encourage your staff to disrespect or find ways to cheat customers, they will also come up with ways to undercut your company and avoid giving their best to the job.
No one likes working for a company that is constantly facing customer issues and getting bad service reviews.
No one wants to be the one getting scolded and shouted at by an unhappy customer or be the person delivering bad news to customers saying that you can’t resolve their issues.
Things like this can be very demoralizing for your staff and can contribute to employee turnover.
If you can’t invest in improving your customer service and fixing your negative reputation, your workers will end up leaving you for a company that does that and makes them proud to work there.
12. It can better position you to charge higher prices
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Customer service is so important to consumers that 67% of them are willing to pay more for better care and experience.
Customers love ease and they are going to stick with any brand that can offer them that even if it means having to pay a higher price than they would if they bought from one of your competitors instead.
What this means is that you can secure a larger market share or generate more profit than your competitors even if you don’t have as many customers as they do by giving your customers the best possible experience.
You can command a higher price for your products and services and people will happily pay it because they know that will be getting better value for their bucks.
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13. Satisfied customers help win over new customers
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Most people believe recommendations and opinions they find online far more than any brand marketing activity. What’s more, a lot of customers start patronizing a company because of its reputation for having great customer service.
Happy customers don’t just spend more or keep returning to buy from you, they can also influence other people to see your business as trustworthy and patronize you too.
When a customer is impressed with the service you provide, they will gladly drop a review or share a testimonial showering your business with praise.
You can take these reviews and client testimonials and turn them into a success story series, and an in-depth case study and add them to a dedicated social proof page on your website.
When potential customers see all the nice things your current customers have to say about you, they will be more willing to take that next step towards conversion.
14. It boosts trust and loyalty
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The quality of customer service is an important factor that determines their loyalty to a brand. If you can address your customer’s pain points, solve their problems, be transparent when things go wrong, and make them feel like they are number one every time, they will come to trust you heavily.
This trust will then translate into loyalty, making them happy to keep doing business with you for a long time.
Additionally, they will talk you up to anyone who cares to listen because they want other people to experience all the wonderful benefits that your business has to offer.
Great customer experience can also encourage your customers to join your special membership, loyalty, or VIP programs, which will spur them to spend even more money on a consistent basis.
Merely increasing your company’s customer satisfaction score by 10% can lead to a 12% increase in customer trust, and bring with a host of rewards for your business.
15. Reduces marketing costs
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You won’t have to spend a ton of money on promotional activities aimed at generating leads and acquiring new customers if you do a good job of turning existing customers into brand advocates.
Focus on meeting your customer’s needs and keeping them happy and they will take it upon themselves to promote your brand.
Providing pleasant and meaningful customer service can also make it easier for you to segment your customers and create more personalized experiences and offerings for each and every one.
When you interact with your customers regularly, you can learn more about them and get them to volunteer additional information that you can use to tailor and streamline their experiences.
16. It makes people more likely to patronize you
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Customer service is one of the things that people take into consideration when making purchasing decisions. For most people, the quality of service that you provide is what will ultimately decide whether they will buy from you or go with one of your competitors.
It’s important to make sure that every employee in a customer-facing role is very knowledgeable about the business and able to easily placate a disappointed customer. They should also know how to put the mind of a doubtful customer at ease.
Commit to giving your customers an absolutely pleasant experience every time they buy from you or use your service and watch them keep returning to do business with you over and over.
It will also make it easy for them to refer other people to your company because they trust that you will not make them look bad.
17. Proactive customer service prevents embarrassing situations
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Don’t wait for customers to notice a problem and reach out to you about it, get ahead of it by bringing it to their attention and proffering an effective solution or letting them know that you are working to fix the issue. That is what it means to be proactive with your customer service.
Send popup messages or emails to customers informing downtimes, outages, and any other issues so they can plan around them and prevent them from potentially venting out their frustrations publicly.
You can even smooth things over by offering some kind of compensation—credits, special discounts, limited time offers, free shipping, etch—along with your apology.
If you deploy a new feature that resolves an issue with your product, contact your customers and bring it to their attention instead of assuming they will discover it on their own. This way, customers will know that you are doing your best to improve their experience.
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18. It leads to an uptick in online conversion rates
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Personalizing customer experiences can improve your online conversion rate by 8% on average. The more visitors to your website or social media pages that you succeed in converting, the higher the number of sales you will generate and the greater the revenue you get to take home.
If you can find ways to personalize experiences for customers and make them feel like you are dedicated to helping them find the right product or solutions for them, they will be more likely to convert.
For example, if you sell makeup or skincare products, you can help new customers select the right shades for their skin tone or the appropriate products for their specific skincare concerns.
19. Informs product and business decisions
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When you make serving your customers a priority, it will direct how you set goals and organize tasks because all of that will be geared towards making your customer’s lives better.
Before you launch a new marketing campaign, make improvements to your customer service, or develop new products and features, you need to consider how it will be viewed by your customers or clients.
If there are features your customers keep requesting or flaws that they constantly point out, it will make more sense to create or fix them first before embarking on other projects.
You can even run surveys and ask your customers to contribute ideas for features, products, or services that they would like to see among your offerings.
20. It makes it easy for customers to forgive a bad experience
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The average person will tell multiple people when they experience poor customer service, and many people will switch to a competitor after a bad service experience.
What’s more, they will start spending less with your company following a subpar experience and some will even go as far as informing the media about their poor experience.
Each of these actions can have detrimental effects on your brand’s reputation. It can make new customers wary about doing business with you and push existing customers to move on to a different brand before they suffer the same bad experience.
But if your business has built a solid reputation on providing amazing customer service across the board, 80% of customers will be willing to forgive a bad experience and continue patronizing you.
Conclusion
Customer service can positively impact every level of your organization and the overall growth of your business if you leverage its power. It’s what people will remember the most when they think of their interactions with your brand.
Don’t just assume your customers are pleased with the service you are offering. Make sure to carry out customer satisfaction surveys regularly to see what customers have to say about your service experience and how well you are meeting their expectations.
