The Bottom Line: Bad Service, Worse Sales
September 01, 2006
When customer service reps get it wrong, everyone in your company pays
By Dave Stein
Who has the customer service job at your company? You can have the best products, the best marketing or the best sales approach, but if your customer service team isn't able to provide the levels of service that your customers expect, you are not going to be (or going to stay) a leader in your market. Customer service that falls below your customers' expectations will cost you money, whether their expectations are reasonable or not, and no matter how those expectations were set. That's a customer service rule.
My local grocery store's service is so bad, it's insulting. The people manning the two cash registers always talk to each other when they are checking out customers. Do they say hello to you? If you're lucky. Checkout progress often stops during an interesting part of their conversation. And a thank you? Never. The cashier drops your change into your hand while looking the other way, carrying on with the conversation. And the prices aren't cheap, either, so that's no excuse. I will go an additional five miles just to avoid shopping there. I actually figured out that this nonsense has cost that grocery store around $32,500 of my business, and I can't be alone.
When I was last on vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica, I knew there was something different about the service at a hotel where my wife and I went for dinner. I was bowled over when I saw a sign posted over the bar intended to be seen by employees rather than guests. It was the hotel's "10-5 Rule." When two or more employees of the Half Moon Resort are talking, they must discontinue conversation when a guest comes within 10 feet of them, and an employee must speak to a guest when they get within five feet. This customer service rule makes a big difference in a very competitive market.
The effects ripple internally, too. I hear from many sales executives who complain that their salespeople don't have enough selling time because they spend too much time being customer service reps. Sometimes products don't work as expected. Sometimes customers need hand-holding. Perhaps a commitment was broken. I understand all that. But whatever the case, if customer service can't manage the situation, sales are impacted. First, the salesperson needs to be selling, not fixing. Second, a dissatisfied customer is less likely to buy from you again. Third, word gets around, so it becomes harder to land new account business.
Marketing efforts also suffer when customer service is deficient. For example, I've seen companies make embarrassing concessions just to cajole a customer into providing a testimonial or a remark for a press release. It's bad business when marketing spends its limited time doing damage control, rather than leveraging stellar customer satisfaction levels as a competitive differentiator.
Ask yourself: What percentage of your team's time is spent performing customer service-related activities, and what is that costing you in terms of lost revenue or increased expense? Put a business case together and bring it upstairs to the CEO. If there is a product problem, it needs to be fixed. If your customer care people aren't caring for customers, that has to be fixed.
Sales and marketing professionals have tough enough jobs. We must push the job of customer service back to the customer service department, or we'll never get our job done—creating new customers.
Dave Stein is CEO and Founder of ES Research Group in Mahopac, N.Y. and author of How Winners Sell. He is a regular contributor to our blog, S&MM SoundOff.
Dave Stein can be reached at edit@salesandmarketing.com
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