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Rarely a day goes by in my personal or professional life, where I couldn’t write at least one article on the poor service I receive from companies trying to do business with me.
The most recent involved my mobile phone company (who shall remain nameless here). I was locked out, so I called their service centre and was advised that my account was “in breach of their acceptable use policy” or similar. According to their records, I had downloaded around 8Gb of data on my mobile broadband modem (I’m on a 1Gb plan), and my monthly bill was now $1,045.
Right. Big pause. Deep breath.
My normal monthly bill is about $60! So very calmly, I explained that there had to be some kind of mistake. Yes, I agreed that I had been using more data than normal due to moving house (with no fixed LAN line for a while), but there was no way on God’s green earth that I had used 8Gb.
After being told that the issue was on my side, and that I’d have to pay, it took some very patient, logical questioning on my part before the consultant finally agreed to “look into it”. And guess what... they had charged me at the wrong rates. I had downloaded 2Gb, not 8Gb, and my bill was only $145, which I accepted.
Have you ever wondered what the real impact of such poor service is, upon a company’s bottom line profits?
The truth would cause serious concern for most business leaders. Let me explain.
In a recent survey of senior executives within the IT, sales and marketing industries, participants were asked how many “negative experiences” their customers would tolerate before going to a competitor. The most notable responses are as follows:
- 10% of respondents : 1 negative experience
- 17% of respondents : 2 negative experiences
- 41% of respondents : 4 negative experiences
If you’re responsible for technical or customer service in your company, you may want to consider these statistics the next time you’re in conversations about funding training for your support staff! Especially if your customers have a low threshold for poor service... in the case of my broadband internet provider, I’ve been with this company for almost a decade. But what if this had been my FIRST experience with them? It probably would’ve been my last!
Now here’s the good news – in a world full of “ordinary” customer service, it doesn’t take much for you to outshine your competition. I promise you that the steps you take to improve your customer service will not go unnoticed!
In future edition of OmniBits, I’ll share some of the “lessons from the trenches” that my team & I have learned (and continue to learn) as we continue our journey of improving customer service.
My hope is that you’ll be able to apply some of these into your own business, and see short-term and long-term benefits.
At the same time, I always welcome any feedback you have on customer service – positive or negative (from companies other than the ones you are associated with, of course!)
Back to my mobile internet story – I couldn’t help but think, “What if I’d just paid the bill? And how many others are in this same situation every month?” Makes you wonder, doesn’t it...
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