When a customer’s faced with a choice of amazing versus poor customer service, which do you think they’ll pick?
Need convincing? Here’s 12 stats you should know about customer service.
1: How the customer feels they’re being treated drives 70% of buying experiences
Nobody wants to feel like they’re not being treated well — whether that’s a grumpy cashier in a store or a pushy salesperson that makes the customer feel pressured. People prefer a friendly, helpful approach.
2: It’s way cheaper — 5 to 25 times! — to retain existing clients over investing in new
Happy, return customers are a lot easier to achieve than finding a new one in the first place. Help make it a habit to buy from you by making it pleasant.
3: A single positive experience can prompt 77% of customers to recommend a brand
That’s the value of customer service. Deliver enough to wow a customer, even (or especially!) on their first engagement with you, and you’ve got a great chance of earning a recommendation.
4: Offer excellent customer service and 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases
Worried about the cost of offering customer service that goes above and beyond your competitors? With these numbers, it’s going to more than pay for itself.
5: One unresolved negative experience has the power of 12 positive experiences
When something goes wrong, it counts for a whole lot of things going well. Spending the resources to prevent the negative experiences is cheaper than trying to make up for it — but whether a phone call or a poor online review, do at least try to resolve the negative.
6: People want something more personal than a form
For customer service, 62% want to talk via email, 48% want a phone call, and 42% prefer live chat. Only 36% want to resort to those impersonal “Contact Us” forms.
7: One third of customers are most frustrated by waiting on hold — and another third are when they repeat themselves to multiple support reps
Between automation, chat, email, and other mediums, these problems are solvable. Give people convenient, tracked ways of getting customer service, and you can eliminate these two enormous hang ups.
8: You probably won’t even know how many people had a poor experience
For every one customer that does tell you about their negative experience? You can expect another 25 to simply leave without a word — to you, anyway, because:
9: Angry customers are more likely to share their negative experiences
Make someone happy and they may tell around 11 people. But make them angry, and 15 people could hear the story. Factor in from above that it takes a lot more positive experiences to outweigh negative, and you’ve got a big problem when you don’t right things that go wrong.
10: Good customer experience beats price for 64% of customers
People will pick the good experience even when it’s more expensive — because expense is more than the dollar amount, it’s also the hassle of dealing with a company that just isn’t interested in being helpful.
11: Increase retention rates to increase profits
Even a 5% increase in your retention rates could deliver increased profits — between 25% and 95%.
12: Most unhappy customers who do get the problem resolved will consider buying again
The good news: if you do make a mistake and a customer becomes dissatisfied, resolving their problem will see 70% of these customers willing to shop with you again.
Flawless Inbound is a B2B marketing, sales, and customer service expert. We've helped more than 80 B2B companies across Canada and the US up their customer service game to incredible results. To learn more about our methods, check out this page!