The role of top-notch customer service can never be denied, which is obvious from the statistics about mass customization and customer-focused technology. This is because a business only prospers when customers are treated respectfully and when a company focuses on building strong relationships with customers as well as company employees.
Why Top-notch Customer Service Is Important
The importance of top-notch customer service can never be denied, because customers actively look for company responses and do not want to be ignored.
Having a look at several statistics will give you an idea of how it works:
- Most of the U.S. population pays special importance to the quality of customer service, which is obvious from the Microsoft studies that reveal that about 90% of Americans consider customer service an essential factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a brand.
- Have you ever seen customers willingly pay more money for a particular product, especially when the same quality product is available at lower rates? About 68% of customers are willing to pay more money for products and services from a brand known to have top-notch customer service.
- Good customer service can help corporations develop long-term brand loyalty in 86% of customers. Investopedia says that investing in new customers can be 5 to 25 times more expensive than simply retaining your old customers through customer services. From these statistics, it is obvious that customers usually value the quality of customer services and prefer companies that provide them with the best experiences.
- Remember that top-notch customer service heavily influences brand recommendations. Customers who give good ratings to brands are 38% more likely to recommend that brand to their friends.
Why Suboptimal Customer Service Is Detrimental To Brand Success
Customer service can make or break your brand. Here are some customer service statistics that shed light on the detrimental effects of having a suboptimal customer service:
- Even when the quality of a product is superior, customers will not give it a chance and will completely ignore the company if the company is not interested in providing premium and top-notch customer service. Microsoft claims that about 58% of American consumers will switch brands because of poor customer service.
- Most customers are not willing to give a company a second chance and immediately leave that particular company when they receive poor customer support. Around 80% of consumers say that they would prefer to do business with a competitor after having more than one bad experience with the customer service of a brand.
- If we pay attention to the impact caused by bad customer service on sales, we come to know that around 78% of customers have backed out of a product purchase due to poor customer service of a brand.
- Customers become easily angered when they do not receive good customer services. Research from Qualtrics XM Institute reveals that only one in five customers tend to forgive a bad experience with the customer service of a brand whose service they rate as "very poor." On the other hand, about 80% are willing to forgive a bad experience with a brand's customer service whose service they rate as "very good."
- Bad experiences almost always negatively impact the overall reputation of a company. According to Ruby Newell-Legner, it takes 12 positive reviews from customers to make up for one bad experience regarding customer service.
Why Having A Relationship Between A Brand And Customer Is Important
Having a personal connection with your customers and making them feel visible is very important. Here are some statistics that explain why having a personal touch in your brand’s customer service is integral to building trust and brand loyalty among your consumers:
- Basically, all customers want to feel noticed and understood. The reason for this is because customers are concerned about a company providing adequate solutions for their problems, and customers are not willing to compromise on the quality of the solution.
- Handling customers with special care is the key to success, because everyone wants to gain attention. Around 63% of customers expect brands to recognize their unique needs and demands. The same goes for 76% of B2B customers.
Personalized customer service is very important
- Personalized messaging delivers a specific, valuable message that is relevant to users. TrustPilot claims that the online conversion rate of a brand can dramatically improve by 8% if they include personalized consumer experiences.
- Personalized customer service goes above and beyond satisfying customers' needs: it gives them a reason to conduct business with your company. About 70% of customers feel that service agents need to be aware of sales interactions to grow their brands. Providing personalized services is often very difficult for a company, because every customer has different demands and unique needs.
- Good companies do not ignore this fact and try their best to serve customers in a personalized way. All of these facts are further strengthened by the research that suggests that 33% of customers that abandoned their favorite brands last year did so because they felt that those brands lacked the personalization aspect.
- Personal customer service means making the effort of tailoring service to a customer's specific expectations and underlying aspirations. Almost 48% of customers expect to be treated in a specialized manner for being loyal customers.
- Personalization is more than paying lip service to customer's preferences; rather, it is adding value to a customer's choice. Microsoft’s studies reveal that around 72% of customers expect brands to know who they are, what they prefer to buy, and their previous engagements with the brands when contacting customer service.
Why Privacy Policies And Safeguarding Of Personal Information Is Important
Data and privacy policy heavily influence the reputation of a brand. A bad data policy can ruin your brand image. Remember the Facebook data scandal? Here are some statistics that explain the importance of privacy policies:
- Maintaining privacy and protecting personal information of your customers and employees is important for all organizations. According to research, around 88% of customers trust brands that vow not to share their data without their permission.
- Privacy management should go beyond mere regulatory requirements, since it not only impacts an organization's reputation, but can also lead to financial losses due to a decrease in revenue and litigation. Research suggests that about 56% of customers don't mind sharing their data with companies if the data is utilized to strengthen and improve the brand's customer service and experience.
- Research reveals that 90% of customers trust brands with a firm privacy policy to deal with customer data and personal information.
What Are The Right Support Channels?
Having solid support channels is essential for top-notch customer service. Here at Helpy, you can reap all of the benefits of a live chat support channel. Below are some customer service stats regarding the efficiency of omnichannel, chat, social media, and self-support channels:
- Meeting customer expectations is of primary importance. 75% of customers expect a consistent customer service experience across all customer support channels of a brand (including chat, self-hosted support, social media, etc.).
- Maintaining impeccable customer service provision could put you at a competitive advantage over your competition. Microsoft claims that 55% of customers between the ages of 18-35 tend to appreciate their favorite brands that have good customer service rather than social media support channels.
- Customer service is important to your business because it retains customers and extracts more value from them. Research reveals that only 52% of customer service teams employ the use of online chats and live support systems, compared to 81% of customers who use online chat support or live support systems to communicate with their favorite brands.
What Makes Customers Act In Frustration?
When customers don’t receive the response they expect, they tend to act out in frustration. Here are customer service stats that shed light on the aspects that could irritate your customers and negatively impact your brand image:
- Empathy is the most important customer service skill out there. For example, 21% of customers that are forced to wait at a hospital pharmacy tend to fill their prescriptions in other hospitals.
- Revenue increases with good customer service because it plays a vital role in customer retention. Another research suggests that 33% of customers tend to get frustrated when they are told to wait.
- Customers do not always self-diagnose their issues correctly. 33% of customers tend to get frustrated when they are told to repeat their problems across multiple customer support channels.
- Customer service is often at the heart of a business that aims to provide an exceptional service. According to statistics from New Voice Media, customers consider not being appreciated as the number 1 reason why they change their favorite brands.
- Good customer service is important. It provides value, helps retain customers, creates endorsements, and reduces employee turnover. Glance’s research indicates that 67% of customers have been reported to end calls in frustration when they face difficulties reaching the customer service representatives of a brand.
- Good service can prompt customers to spend more than they'd planned. Detailed research further suggests that 62% of customers tend to prefer to hand out parking tickets rather than waiting in line for an automated phone tree.
- Customer service generates positive word-of-mouth and person-to-person recommendations. About 70% of customers tend to get frustrated when their calls are transferred from one support department to another.
- Data from Statista states, one-third of all customers expect their problems to be solved in one interaction with the customer support team, regardless of the time spent during the interaction.
- PWC research reveals that an overwhelming 75% of customers still prefer to interact with a real person, rather than an automated text message, chatbots, or other automated customer support systems.
- Review42 data says that 77% of customers described the challenges of reaching a customer service agent as the biggest issue with customer service.
The customer service stats discussed above are worth pondering over. As apparent by now, customer service can make or break a brand. The statistics explain how important it is for brands to invest in better customer support teams, support channels, and efficient customer support technology.
Organizing and hiring a reliable customer support team that can deal with the issues and pain points of your customers should be your number one priority. You can also achieve these goals by using reliable helpdesk software, such as Helpy, that can help you in achieving excellent results comparable to above statistics.
As discussed above, customers consider personal interactions and support teams to be the most satisfying ways to resolve issues. Here's our blog on the top 12 customer service skills that you need to develop to deliver the experiences your customers expect.