Not receiving complaints about customer service doesn’t always mean that you’re getting customer service right with your customers.
Research shows that very few of your customers will actually voice their complaints to customer service. This means that even when things seem to be going right, they could be going wrong, very wrong. As a customer service focused organization, you’re better off receiving more complaints as this gives you the opportunity to make things right with your customers instead of just letting them suffer in silence.
The Salesforce team recently published an infographic on 5 common myths that organizations struggle with when it comes to their customer service delivery. Avoiding these typical myths is key for those wanting to align their teams in order to improve the overall customer experiences that customers get from your organization.
5 Customer Service Myths You Can’t Fall For
MYTH: Most customers complain when they get bad customer service
The numbers just don’t add up when it comes to this. Most customers suffer in silence, or better yet, switch to the use the competition. This is the ultimate bad news for your organization. You’re better off getting more complaints as it at least gives you the opportunity to fix the problem, rather than hand a customer over to your competitors.
MYTH: More customer complaints means more money that customer service costs
If you believe this you’re not tracking the nature of most customer service requests accurately. For most organizations nearly all of customer service requests, on average over 80% are for very basic service questions or account management functions.
Even for our team at DigiCert where we’re working with system administrator and network professionals to install SSL Certificates, the average phone call is just less than 5 minutes. This means that 1) most questions aren’t actually very technical, and 2) training your customer service teams to be more effective saves your company money due to reduced requirements for customer service staff.
FACT: Customer complaints are an opportunity
Customer complaints are a gift. Even when a customer complains about the service they received, it’s an opportunity to make things right. Much of customer service is often actually service recovery. The data shows that nearly 50% of customers who complain will remain loyal to your organization if you make things right when they complain about the problem they encountered.
Enable your customer service teams to recover and make things right with the customer when dealing with problems. In my experience in observing customer service teams and as a customer, most customers who defect do so because when they contacted the company about a problem, customer service was “unable” to do anything about it. “Unable” not because customer service didn’t want to do something, but because often times company “policy” or “protocol” prevented them from doing what they really wanted to do, win the customer.
Don’t let the myths of customer service hold back your organization from connecting with and developing the type of customer relationships that create customer loyalty and propel your business forward with massive numbers of fanatical customers. Use customer service in the way it was intended and win over your customers.
