Customer service seems to be a marketing tool that people don’t usually talk about all that often - unless it’s bad customer service. I’m actually writing this post due to a poor customer service experience with Chase, but I’ll get to that in a bit. I’ve always believed that customer service is pretty much above all else. You don’t always have to bend over backwards for them, but you should use whatever power or authority you have to do as much for them as you possibly can. You could have a great product, but because you treat your customers poorly, you will lose them. Conversely, you could have an average product or at least higher prices, and still have a successful business if you can provide the added benefit of superior customer service. If a customer has a bad experience just because you’re company is trying to save money, it can lead to a loss of that customer and possibly others in the future.
Customer service is another “touch point” people have with your company, and most, if not all of the time, it’s when they have some sort of problem they want resolved. People trust names like P&G and Tylenol not only because they’re huge and well known, but also because to become a huge conglomerate, you usually need to have a good product and stand behind it. Your customers are willing to do business with you, sometimes at a premium, because your reputation has shown that other people trust you. A company like Newegg.com probably has one of the best reputations online. They ship faster than expected and also work hard to work out any problems AFTER the sale as well.
It seems as though most companies only concentrate on the selling part but don’t realize that what you do after the sale is just as important - at least if you want to retain customers. There are some businesses that this doesn’t matter such as your fly by night internet site or maybe a highway gas station. However, repeat customers on average cost a lot less than new customers. That fly by night site might be able to get business through PPC and then relaunch the same business with a new name a couple months down the road, but you’ll be paying just as much, maybe more for the traffic as you were before whereas if you just provided good service, you could get customers to shop again on their own and even get new customers from referrals.
It’s getting to be a decently long post, so I’m not going to go into all the details about my experience with Chase. I’ve been a customer with Chase for the last 3 1/2 years or so and they just lost my business for $12. If you by chance don’t believe me that it costs more to keep a customer than to gain a new one, then look in your mail, you might have just received a voucher for $100-$150 if you open up an account with them. Between calling them and visiting them in person (they kept sending me back and forth), it seemed no one was willing to help me and since the only thing keeping me from leaving is the fact that my online billing is set up with them, I decided that I’d rather change all that and open an account elsewhere than try to deal with them anymore. The odd part was that on my last visit, there was a customer satisfaction woman there too!
I’ve been hearing more and more stories about poor customer experience lately and have had a few of my own. Before, it was usually a pleasure and the company will work with you but it seems now, as the economy has deteriated, so has the customer service at many companies.
On a side note, providing good customer experience can provide you with a nice link while providing bad experience can get you links to your Chase Sucks site. Or maybe they’re going with this strategy.
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