“The customer is always right” is a famous business slogan. The underlying truth behind this statement is recognizing that customers are the lifeblood of any business. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart said: “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary”.

It’s essential for companies to translate their promises into actions frequently so as to sustain their brand experience. The trick to delivering exceptional customer service is to do it not once, not twice, but every time your customers walk through your doors. In fact, a study from ZenDesk and Dimensional Research found that people who had bad experiences with customer service were 50% more likely to talk about it on their social channels than those who had good experiences. Also, they shared the bad experience more than 5 times.

With a company’s profitability at stake, it becomes vital for businesses to take customer service very seriously. Knowing the importance of customer service, many businesses have taken steps towards refining their customer service. Despite all these efforts by companies, Forrester predicts that in 2018, 30% of companies will see further declines in customer experience performance. Even after putting in much effort to improve customer service, why are the companies failing? The answer is that customers have become more demanding and companies are unable to keep up with the ever-increasing customer expectations.

Hence, leaders must keep innovating to stay one step ahead of their customers. Those who ignore the situation (and delay until the evidence is overwhelming) are putting their firms at risk as we enter 2019.

Customer Service stats to inspire your 2018 Strategy:

• 76% of consumers feel that offering a callback or “virtual hold” as an alternative to waiting in a queue is “Very or Somewhat Important.” Offering this feature can show customers a sense of recognition and suggest that their time is being respected.
• US Consumers report that being passed between agents is the most frustrating aspect of a customer service experience.
• 5% of contact centers plan to move their technology to the cloud, while only 23.1% plan to retain on-site solutions.
• Maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20%, but also to lift revenue by up to 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%.
• 70% of consumers say that their loyalty to a brand is influenced by their ability to get customer service at any time, every day.
• 86% of consumers say it’s absolutely critical or very important for customer service agents to know their service history so that they don’t have to spend time explaining it to them.
• When dealing with customer service, 83% of business buyers say it’s absolutely critical or very important to be immediately routed to the agent who is most knowledgeable about their company’s issue.

For more customer service stats, click here.

Understanding the importance of good customer service is essential for a healthy business and it definitely helps in acquiring new customers, retaining existing customers, and developing loyalty and referrals for future growth. As customer expectations are increasing, things won’t be easy going forward, but we must remember that if customers receive good service ‘this time, next time, every time,’ then they are more likely to return in the future.