Customer support is fast overtaking price and product as the vital element that differentiates your brand from the rest. Customers who are disappointed with the level of customer service received will quickly leave your business in favour of a competitor’s – and the chances of them ever returning are very low, with 39% avoiding that vendor for at least 2 years after a bad experience, and 58% never using that company again.
For this reason, it’s critical to ensure that you are not destroying your profits by offering poor customer support.
According to research carried out by JitBit, the primary reason why customers leave in favour of a competitor is because they felt underappreciated as a customer. Nowadays, people place a priority on high-quality customer support over and above most other elements. Even if they are excited by the product or the service, they will not hang around for very long after having a poor experience with a member of staff or a generally negative experience.
Expectations are higher than ever with 60% of consumers having higher expectations compared with one year ago.
The implications of poor customer support for businesses are immense:
- 51% claim they will try to reach support only once
- 78% of customers have changed their mind about a transaction due to a poor experience
- 89% have stopped doing business because of a poor experience
- 44% have switched to a competitor thanks to a negative customer service experience
The primary reasons why customers switch to a competitor are:
- 53% feel unappreciated
- 42% felt that staff were rude
- 29% felt that staff were poorly trained
- 25% were kept on hold
There are even more negative implications to take into account when it comes to poor customer support:
95% of customers share bad experiences with others, and since word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, it can be extremely damaging to your business if you do not offer superior customer support.
Further to the above, 48% of consumers will tell ten or more people about a bad experience, and with the prevalence and influence of the internet, it’s not unusual for people to quickly turn to online review sites or social media platforms to write about that negative experience and share it with the world. When someone reads a negative review about a brand, they are extremely unlikely to purchase from that business, while it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for a negative one.
If you’re concerned about the level of customer care available at your business, consider retraining your staff to ensure that they are completely competent, knowledgeable and resourceful to your customers. Their customer support capabilities need to be proficient not just on a face-to-face level but also over the phone, within emails and online.
They also need to know your customers very well so that they can craft their support around their specific needs and wants, no matter which method of communication they use to get in touch.
The most popular methods of support are:
- Telephone: 61%
- Email: 60%
- Live chat: 57%
- Online forums: 51%
- Click to call: 34%
A happy customer is a loyal customer. Are you doing everything within your power to keep your customers happy? If not, then you need to rethink your customer support strategy if you want your customers returning to your brand, time and time again.
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