There has been a lot of talk recently about how companies are devoting more resources to customer service and support. While much of this conversation has centered around software companies, and particularly SaaS companies, the Wall Street Journal had a great article recently (June 7th 2010, Page B6) on the importance of customer service for companies of all types.
The first paragraph sums up the article nicely:
“Executives are paying more attention to customer service in an effort to increase sales and gain market share in the economic recovery.”
I welcome this news both as an executive and as a consumer, but I do wonder why it has taken companies so long to figure this out. Customer service has always been an important differentiator, but many companies seem to be just realizing this. Smart companies (see my
article on Sewell Automotive for a great example) put the customer experience first and I contend that these companies will out perform the competition no matter what economic cycle we are in.
“Just over a quarter of the 1,405 companies surveyed by Accenture last year said customer service would be the first area they’d increase funding for as the economy recovers.” (emphasis mine)
As the CEO of a software company that makes customer service software, this is certainly good news to me (and our revenue numbers so far this year definitely support this!). However, it leaves me wondering what the other 3/4s of the companies will be spending money on? Marketing and sales efforts would be my guess, but as I’ve said before I think in most cases you can increase sales by increasing customer service and making your customers enjoy working with your company and product.
The final paragraph in the article illustrates this point nicely:
“Customer service is “a growth engine for a company in a world where marketing dollars and credit is constrained”, says Jim Bush, head of world-wide customer service [for American Express].”
It is great to see companies looking toward customer service as a “growth engine”. Unfortunately the reverse is also true: Poor customer service can negatively impact sales.
“In another Accenture survey of 5,000 consumers, 69% said they had switched at least one provider because of poor customer service in 2009.”
Yikes! Over two thirds of customers have changed companies they work with due to poor customer service…That’s an astounding number and should be a wake up call for a lot of companies.
I’ve been lucky to mostly work for and run companies where we saw customer service as a growth engine, and it is jarring when companies don’t. In one case we sold a company that was highly customer focused to a company that clearly was not. The transition for both our team and our customers was jarring, and sales were directly affected.
Of course we think TeamSupport.com is the best software on the market for customer service and support, but providing excellent support is more than just a piece of technology. While a product like TeamSupport can certainly help, a “customer first” attitude must be prevalent throughout the company otherwise customer service will be a “boat anchor” and not a “growth engine”.
- Robert
Tags: customer service, customer support
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Hints and Tips.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
