Why Great Customer Service Improves Your Bottom Line

Customers and merchants alike are recovering from an explosive week of shopping, during which time Americans spent in excess of $5 billion on Black Friday and Amazon reported its biggest single day ever on Cyber Monday. This unprecedented level of spending puts even more pressure on your customer support to be top notch. With reams of shoppers exploring your offerings, it’s a make-or-break opportunity to woo new customers by offering exceptional service.

Yet the world’s companies are collectively leaving a staggering $338.5 billion per year on the table, due to poor customer service. This comes from a Genesys report on the economic impact of customer experience. It’s actually not surprising when you consider that up to 89% of all consumers will bring their business to a competitor following an unpleasant customer experience. Considering it costs five times as much to acquire a customer as to retain one, it’s easy to see how the costs start to pile up.

Along with shrinking attention spans, we seem to have lost the patience (or willingness) to put up with poor service. If a company doesn’t get it right the first time, we’re more likely to give up and move on to another option. And the younger you are, the less loyal you feel to a brand that burns you. Millennials are far more willing to switch to a different business than older generations, a chilling prospect for those with lackluster support policies in the years to come. With half of all agents leaving customers’ questions unanswered and customers spreading bad word of mouth at an astonishing rate, the directive is clear: Make your customers happy.

We’ve written before on how to boost the quality of your customer support, communications, and feedback. You know how superior service fosters customer loyalty. But did you realize that by breeding loyalty among your customers, you’re also creating a bit of willing blindness to price increases? That’s right, customers are willing to pay more in order to receive superior service, according to Small Business Trends. As if the incentive for spending a little more on customer service wasn’t there already, here we see consumers are willing to cover those costs for you.

Providing quality support is a no-brainer, and these statistics bolster what has been obvious to us at ModSquad for our ten years of existence: Treat your customers right and the rewards will come. This tenet rings true not only during the shopping-intense holiday season, but all year-round. If you’re not in the position to adequately support your customers, turn to expert providers who can do it for you. Don’t fall for the penny-wise/pound-foolish trap; think beyond the next fiscal quarter. Funding customer support will reap dividends for many, many quarters to come. You can take that to the bank.