Today, potential customers have more options than ever to make a purchase. It is easier to compare services. With visible online reviews and customer engagement on a variety of channels, your company’s performance is under scrutiny. Customers and prospects have no problem switching to a competitor if they deem it appropriate.
Obtaining a new customer is more expensive than maintaining an existing one, so customer retention is crucial to business success. And customer service has a drastic impact on customer retention. 89% of customers have stopped doing business with a company after a bad experience and 58% will never deal with that company again.
Loss of business and recurring customers
No matter how great your products are, if you do not meet the service expectations of your customers, they will never be happy with what you offer. Not listening to your customers and ignoring their needs will not only bother them, it will also make them leave your company. If your customer service is poor, you will have low customer retention rates and never reach your business goals.
Bad reviews online
If you don’t take your customer complaints seriously and don’t immediately and honestly resolve those issues, you will lose customers and this will affect your company’s reputation. Most customers will reveal the truth about their poor customer services on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Negative comments and bad reviews spread quickly on social media and this will affect your reputation and your business goals.
New clients stay away
New customers look for companies based on the recommendations of people they know, and they will avoid a company when they hear first-hand accounts of poor customer service. People place more importance on negative reports than positive ones and believe more in the first-hand experience of their friends and family than in impersonal sources such as advertising.
So if your customer service is lacking, potential customers can find your business, but they will choose what their competitors offer.
Employees leave
Employees know when things are not right in the company they work for. If they see frequent cases of poor customer service, they will start looking for opportunities with other companies. This is because dealing with dissatisfied clients makes their work difficult and makes the work environment toxic.
Management that doesn’t treat its customers well probably doesn’t care about the well-being of its employees, either. High staff turnover tarnishes a company name. It creates more costs due to the greater need for recruiting, hiring and training new employees.
