Introduction
Whether you have a real estate agency, e-commerce, or retail company, customer service is of utmost priority as happy customers lead to business growth, profitability, and sustainability. Despite putting the focus on marketing, product development, technology, manufacturing, and a myriad of other departments, customer service matters a lot. Customer satisfaction is not only important for customer retention but also helps in brand building a lot. By offering top-notch customer service, companies recoup costs of customer acquisition and cultivate brand loyalty among the customers’ minds.
Why Should Brands Focus on Customer Service?
Do you know customers nowadays are willing to pay more for the brands that provide excellent customer service? If you lack in marketing and product development, it will not matter a lot if you serve your customers in the best way possible. Think about a situation, where a customer came to a store and the salesperson didn’t greet him. There is a 100% possibility that the customer will certainly not come again to your store. Below are the reasons that brands should focus on while serving customers.
1. Increased Revenue
Excellent customer service is directly proportional to the increased profitability of the company. Research says that more than 84% of the companies are striving to focus on improving their customer service as it has a direct impact on enhanced sales and improved brand loyalty. Companies can use customer service metrics to measure the level and simply improve them by getting a parallel connection to their revenue generation. Increased sales mean better profitability and this is the ultimate goal of any company.
2. Improved Brand Reputation
Happy customers are responsible for building a strong brand reputation in the market. A positive brand reputation will lead to higher business growth in many aspects. The reputation of a company goes a long way as it attracts partnerships, employees, investors, and improved sales. It is said that after a positive customer experience, there is a 70% chance that the customer would recommend your brand to others. When seeking towards improving brand reputation and brand loyalty, provide excellent customer service.
3. Customer Retention
For any business to grow, customer retention is the main path that needs to be focused on by businesses during their expansion procedure. The easiest way to business growth and sustainability is keeping the current customers happy that will result in stable revenue generation and more customer acquisition. The majority of the customers stick to a brand because of the customer support they have experienced. In today’s business world, customer satisfaction is more prevalent than product satisfaction. 75% of the customers will return to the brand providing excellent service.
4. Better Customer Lifetime Value
The customer lifetime value increases whenever a brand is successful in offering great customer service. CLTV refers to the amount of capital that a customer brings to the brand over the course of the customer engagement. CLTV has a direct correlation with the company revenue. Customers who are engaged highly purchase 90% more frequently, spend more than 60% of transactions, and 3 times the annual value when compared to other customers. Excellent customer support leads to engaged customers who will follow social media channels of the brand, read blog posts, emails, etc.
5. Enhanced Brand Awareness
Brand awareness soars high when customers experience great customer service from the brand. Positive customer experiences act as a huge role in building brand awareness in the market. The market offers lots of options to the customers. Brands that will stay ahead of the competition will enjoy a high brand reputation, brand loyalty. It can be achieved only when your customers are happy with your services. Brands nowadays are striving their best to serve excellent customer service and going beyond to keep their customers happy.
6. Customer Loyalty
Customers will remain loyal if they have received a positive customer experience from your brand. Successful brands in the market are investing more in customer support as it will not only help in customer retention but also it will increase the customer lifetime value. The total revenue generation of the company depends a lot on the number of happy customers and how the brand is successful in creating a positive customer experience that leads to enhanced customer lifetime value.
7. Free Word of Mouth
Remember when we mentioned free advertising in the brand awareness section? Customers’ word of mouth and brand awareness goes hand in hand. If the brand is successful in making its customers happy, then the customers are more likely to spread positive words about the brand. The brand reputation which you will generate from customer’s word of mouth is way more effective than any other marketing technique. Moreover, this is free advertising of your brand that can be achieved when your customers are happy with your service.
8. Creates Marketing Opportunities
Proactive customer service is known for creating marketing opportunities for brands. Adopting proactive customer support is considered the cheapest way of investing in the business. Instead of waiting for customers to reach you with an issue, brands must reach their customers before the problem arises. It will not only help in creating customer delight but also it is an effective marketing tool to cross-sell or up-sell your products. Solving the issue before they arise not only makes the customer delighted but also you can cross-sell many products.
9. Boosts Competitive Advantage
Brands will only be successful when they gain a competitive advantage in the market. Successful brands make customer satisfaction the point of differentiation that has immense benefits. Customer service as part of the business strategy helps in building a brand and retaining customers that will eventually lead to more sales and profitability. Brands offering higher customer support are known for creating an environment where there is a plethora of customer advocates and higher customer satisfaction. More repurchase leads to higher revenue generation and helps in acquiring more customers.
10. Opportunities and Partnerships
In this competitive business world, business tends to attract more business customers while making more money. In many cases, customer service tends to attract great partnerships and open the door of opportunities in foreign markets. If your brand is known to have great customer satisfaction, then customers from the foreign market may accept your product. When other companies will see how you are maintaining your brand reputation and customer loyalty, then they will want to be a part of your business strategy. It will help in expanding your business and generating more revenue than ever.
11. Service Over Price
Nowadays customers are more focused on higher customer service rather than offers and discounts of the brand. Surely discounts bring a lot of customers initially but it can lead to customer churn if the brand fails to provide excellent customer service. Studies show that modern consumers are willing to pay more for good customer service. If a customer experiences poor customer service from a brand, then irrespective of a good product list that customer will not make a repurchase again and is more likely to spread negative word of mouth to his friends and families.
12. Lesser Customer Churn
With an increased customer satisfaction rate of a brand, the rate of customer churn will decrease proportionally. Churn refers to the number of customers who leave the brand after purchasing. If your customers are happy with your products and services, customer churn will be lesser. Research says that almost 89% of the customers switch to competitor brands after receiving poor customer service from the initial brand. To avoid customer churn, brands must focus on measuring customer satisfaction techniques and improve them timely.
Wrapping Up
Good customer service may reap so many benefits to a brand. But there goes a lot of effort from a company’s side to satisfy its customers. Some brands found providing good customer service overwhelming. As a brand, you must focus on delighting your customers whenever possible that will eventually help in enhanced customer lifetime value that will generate more revenue. Having great customer service will provide a better competitive advantage in the market. On the other hand, poor customer support will in turn lead to loss of customers and lesser sales of the products.
