You may have heard the cliché, “Customer Service doesn’t cost. It pays.”
My lead case study in The Amazement Revolution is focused on American Express. Jim Bush, the Executive Vice President of World Service was interviewed for the book and has some pretty strong views on investing in the customer service experience for their members.
As Mr. Bush told me, “Service is the most powerful competitive advantage we have. Service is not a cost, it is an investment. It’s a growth engine for our company.”
So where is the cost – or better – the investment? The cost of service comes in a number of areas including, hiring right, soft skill/relationship training, better customer friendly policies, strong, customer focused guarantees and more.
Where does it pay?
Customer focused organizations tend to be employee focused companies, which leads to lower turnover, which saves money.
Investing in customer service can help create predictable customer experiences, which creates confidence, which is essential to creating customer loyalty – which means more business from existing employees.
Investing in the customer experience can help make price less relevant, de-commoditize the products and services you sell, create word of mouth and more.
The bottom line is that investing in customer service is exactly that: an investment – and one that can pay big dividends.
