Any service business relies on clients be it business to business or business to consumer. Unless you are the sole provider of a service and have a monopoly you need to make your clients happy. Or, if you want to be realistic about it, you need to go beyond happiness and delight them.
That’s not always easy to do and in some cases is impossible.
The hard reality is that some people will never be 100% happy with your level of service, and although this might be distressing you need to deal with it.
The majority of clients, however, can be satisfied and you should do your utmost to go beyond that where possible. Satisfying clients is not enough. Delighting them is the ultimate goal.
Many moons ago I was given some figures on how unhappy clients and happy clients react.
As I was working for Disney at the time (no I wasn’t Mickey Mouse!) they had also gone to great lengths to work out the economic costs of unhappy customers. The figures were scary.
According to studies an unhappy client will tell ten of their friends about a bad experience, whereas a happy one will tell two.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out how much that can cost you if you get it wrong.
I had originally started writing this entry some months ago, but I was made think of it again today while reading some posts over on Irish ISP Test
The number of people who have posted there and elsewhere about their (negative) experiences with IBB (an Irish wireless ISP) is overwhelming. I would love to be able to think that it was merely a case of a minority voicing their unhappiness, but after having experienced their customer service (though ‘service’ may not be the most appropriate word) I would have to think otherwise.
On the other hand companies such as Nova Networks have embraced customer service and are more than happy to engage with their clients directly in public
Oddly enough they are the only ones to have “come out” on that forum, while the others prefer to remain anonymous.
What is the lesson that can be learnt from this?
If you look at the way Dave handled the situation you can see how proactive customer service can turn a potentially destructive situation into a a productive postive experience.
Maybe we could all learn from this.
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