Poor Customer Service

4 Key excerpts on "Poor Customer Service"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Best Service is No Service

  How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs

  • Bill Price, David Jaffe(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Jossey-Bass

    (Publisher)

  Figure 1.2 ). Over 40 percent of those encountering poor service said that they switch companies, as opposed to only 5 percent of those encountering great service (meaning that great service didn’t save the companies from the consequences of poor products or prices); and a whopping 40 percent in each situation say that they tell their friends, spreading both the good news and the bad news to others. Intriguingly, fewer than 10 percent of those encountering poor service say that they register a complaint, confirming that complaints represent only the tip of the iceberg, and reinforcing our points in Chapter Five regarding making it really easy to contact your company so that these voices can be heard and understood.

  FIGURE 1.2 : “WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER POOR SERVICE? GREAT SERVICE?”

  Source: University of Washington executive MBA class, Bill Price, 2004

  In another, wider survey conducted by Customer Think, formerly known as CRM Guru.com , consumers with positive memorable experiences (“promoters”) expressed a significantly higher propensity for recommending the products or services to friends than did those with negative memorable experiences (“detractors”). The promoters also purchased more products and services, and complained far less. The survey results appear in Figure 1.3 .

  As these and other studies indicate, there are multiple “costs” or impacts of not getting service right. We will look at the revenue, cost, and brand implications in turn.

  LOST REVENUE

  The first impact of poor service is loss of revenue. Faced with poor service experiences, in many industries customers will switch to other providers—perhaps not as a result of a single experience, so the switch might not happen immediately, but with some customers it will happen sooner or later. Sometimes companies do not pick up on the implications of service failure as they research customer switching. Customer exit surveys usually ask why the customer switched, and many customers cite such reasons as “I got a better offer” or that their new choice was “cheaper.” However, the customers may have been open to the offer only because they have had service experiences that did not satisfy them. The fact that poor service experiences weakened loyalty or made customers look for alternatives is often not picked up by these types of exit research.

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  eBook - ePub

  Customer Care

  A Training Manual for Library Staff

  • Pat Gannon-Leary, Michael McCarthy(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Chandos Publishing

    (Publisher)

  In this activity, participants are required to list two or three businesses (shops, restaurants, garages, libraries, council offices, even departments within their own organisation) that they try to avoid dealing with because of unfair treatment or a poor service encounter in the past. On a sheet of paper, they should note the businesses in the first column and itemise the reasons they avoid them in the second column.

  Next, the participants are asked to think of an occasion when they received good customer service, noting the business concerned along with itemised reasons as to why their experience was memorable or exceptional.

  Participants can then briefly discuss their experiences with the participant sitting next to them before sharing the experiences with the group and the facilitator(s), who should concentrate on the reasons why the service experiences were good or bad. These can be written on a flipchart under the headings ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’.

  You may wish to refer to some of the case studies in this book for examples.

  The Urban Life study on bad customer service

  In 2003, the Urban Life group conducted a study on bad customer service experiences. Asking the question, ‘What type of bad customer service have you experienced in the past four weeks?’, the results were as follows:

   being put on hold during a phone call: 84 per cent;

   someone not returning your call: 63 per cent;

   being served by a cashier who was ignoring you: 60 per cent;

   asking shop staff a simple question to which they did not know the answer: 49 per cent;

   unable to find a member of staff in a supermarket: 40 per cent;

   having a problem with a product where the store did not apologise: 39 per cent;

   queuing to buy a train ticket for more than ten minutes: 26 per cent;

   none of the above: 3 per cent

  Aim 2: Recognising the importance of customers’ expectations and feelings

  In any customer-focused service, one must define the customer’s view of quality and then deliver to that level. Simply put, quality is what the customer says it is.

  As we have said previously, some of your customers’ expectations may well be beyond your power to deliver. Don’t have sleepless nights over this. Nonetheless, think about what service quality means to your customers. Ideally, they will expect it to be:

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  Managing Service Excellence

  The Ultimate Guide to Building and Maintaining a Customer-Centric Organization

  • C. William Crutcher(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Diamin Publishing

    (Publisher)

  This should be an eye-opener: Most customers left because of how they were treated! It is estimated that businesses spend six to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current one. These statistics suggest that a vast improvement in customer retention efforts, including regular employee training, is critical to business success.

  Customer dissatisfaction is associated with the following primary contributing factors:

  • A promise that was not delivered on. Refer back to the example of the cable technician. Not showing up when expected was a cause for frustration and a strained relationship with the company. Again, we must make the promises we can keep and keep the promises we make.

  • Service that was rude or inefficient. Treat every customer as though you want them to return—because you do! They are the reason you are in business, and they can choose to go elsewhere—“vote with their feet.”

  • Conflicting messages from different employees. It is important that all customer-contact employees understand the organization’s procedures and communicate them consistently to customers.

  In one of my corporate jobs, I traveled frequently. Twenty-four hours before departure, we could call the airline for an upgrade to first class based on availability. This became a bit of a game. If the agent indicated there was no space available, we would hang up and call right back. We always got a different agent, and in many cases, there would magically be upgrade space available. It was clear that some agents did not understand the procedure, or worse, chose not to process the upgrade. Either way, the inconsistency did not leave a positive image of their training and commitment to the customer.

  • Being taken advantage of, or having the feeling of being taken advantage of. You may be the expert in your field, but remember, your customer probably isn’t.

  Imagine you are driving on the highway and there appears to be excessive vibration at higher speeds. You take the car to a service center for diagnostics and repair. The service technician says you have a blown front passenger strut and the repair will be $495. He further states that while they do that repair, they will rotate and balance your tires at no charge. Is this a good deal? You probably don’t know. It could be that all you really needed was your tires balanced to eliminate the vibration. Or, possibly you did have a bad strut. Because we are not subject matter experts in most things, it is incumbent upon the service professional to take time to explain their products and services to the customer and make sure all questions are answered in understandable terms.

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  The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism

  • Linda L. Lowry(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Customer Service in Service Businesses Customer Service in Service Businesses

  Steve Burns Steve Burns Burns, Steve

  Phil Higson Phil Higson Higson, Phil

  334 337

  Customer Service in Service Businesses

  Steve Burns Phil Higson

  Economic activity in developed nations has changed significantly in recent years, shifting from predominantly manufacturing-based enterprises to the service sector. The service sector includes areas such as government, telecommunications, health care and hospitals, banking and financial services, insurance services, management consulting, retail, leisure, entertainment, hospitality, and travel and tourism. The service sector now constitutes around two-thirds of GDP in the developed countries (in Europe it is even higher, at around 70%). This means the term customer service has increasing importance, especially for the travel and tourism industry. There is no agreed-on definition of the term customer service but a reasonable starting point might be that used by the United Kingdom’s Institute of Customer Service: “the sum total of what an organisation does to meet customer expectations and produce customer satisfaction” (ICS, 2015).

  This denotes a broad spectrum of processes and culture, and reflects the many facets of an organization’s relationship with its customers, especially a focus on helping or assisting its customers. The term is also used to indicate elements of customer satisfaction, often qualified by such adjectives as “good,” “bad,” “excellent,” “poor.” These are used to illustrate how customers themselves perceive levels of customer service provided by the organization.

  We Are All Customers Now

  The service revolution has changed who is perceived as a customer. In Britain, those borrowing books from libraries, students in universities, and hospital patients are all considered “customers.” Even having your rubbish collected makes you a customer, not simply someone putting out the trash. This revolution has also driven changes in the way organizations perceive their internal processes. The notion of the “internal” customer (as opposed to the “external” customer or purchaser of the organization’s goods or services) has received increasing attention. An internal customer may be anyone within the organization (which may include managers, supervisors, departmental colleagues, and staff in other departments) who contributes toward the final service or product produced by the organization. It has been argued that developing more effective internal customer relationships can lead to better external customer satisfaction, in addition to reduced costs and increased productivity.

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