Having excellent customer service is one of the most important building blocks of any business, both large and small. Customer service makes marketing more affordable, makes both customers and employees happy and helps improve your brand image and reputation.
Happy Customers and Happy Employees
Having great customer service creates happy customers. Having happy customers results in more customer referrals, greater customer retention, and increased brand loyalty. If someone has a problem with your product or service and you provide them with poor customer service, it is unlikely that they would be a repeat customer. It is even more unlikely that they would recommend your business to someone else. Providing great customer service helps ensure that your customers become repeat customers and become an important part of your marketing plan via word of mouth marketing.
Happier employees tend to provide much better customer service than unhappy employees. When someone has a problem with your business, they want to interact with someone who is empathetic and appears to genuinely care about solving the issue that customer has with your business. Since so many people deal with poor customer service every day, providing them with an above and beyond effort to solve the problem can leave a lasting impression.
Brand Image
Your customer service is an essential part of your business’s brand image. Chick-Fil-A is an excellent example of how a company’s customer service can become its brand image. Chick-Fil-A is notorious for providing excellent customer service to each and every one of its customers. Customers go to Chick-Fil-A expecting above and beyond customer service and they make it a point to follow through with this, as it has become their brand image.
Great Customer Service Results in Increased Revenues
Customer service is an area of the business that is often overlooked by business owners when it comes to determining their competitive advantage. You can provide a product or service to your customers that are nearly identical in quality to your competitors, but if you provide better customer service than them, you will earn a greater portion of the market share in your industry. Back to the Chick-Fil-A example, they aren’t the most affordable option in the chicken sandwich industry. They may not even have the best-tasting chicken. What they do have is a reputation for excellent customer service. Their loyal customers know that if they go to Chick-Fil-A, no matter the time, no matter how busy the location may be, they will always receive fast and friendly service. This is something any company can replicate if they put enough time and effort into improving their customer service.
Closing
Every company should focus on its brand image, customer retention, and brand loyalty. In order to improve on these three points, customer service should be prioritized as it is much more cost-effective to retain customers than to get new customers.