Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article titled Good Service is Good Business: American Consumers Willing to Spend More With Companies That Get Service Right, According to American Express Survey,  many customers are willing to spend between 7 – 22% more for good customer service.

In a recent survey called the American Express® Global Customer Service Barometer conducted in 10 countries (Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., the Netherlands, Australia, India, and the US), showed some very interesting statistics about how much more the majority of consumers were will to spend with companies that provide with excellent customer support:

1. India – 22%

2.  US  – 13%

3. Australia – 12%

4. Canada – 12%

5. Mexico – 11%

6. UK  – 10%

7. France – 9%

8. Italy  – 9%

9. Germany – 8%

10. Netherlands -  7%

Some key findings of the American Express study:

• “78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience.
• Three in five Americans (59%) would try a new brand or company for a better service experience.
• Americans tell an average of nine people about good experiences and nearly twice as many (16 people) about poor ones.
• Customers who have a fantastic service experience say friendly representatives (65%) who are ultimately able to solve their concerns (66%) are most influential.
• Consumers worldwide value service – but most feel businesses aren’t measuring up.
• Six in ten Americans (60%) believe businesses haven’t increased their focus on providing good customer service – up from 55% in 2010.
  
• Four in five Americans (81%) agree that smaller companies place a greater emphasis on customer service than large businesses.
• Companies that have earned a reputation for service excellence understand the employees interacting with customers every day are the true ambassadors of their brands.”

Food for Thought

This information isn’t earth shattering news. Most companies intuitively know that poor customer service generates poor loyalty and that reputations are made or broken on product quality, meeting customer expectations and good customer service. But sometimes it is helpful to have a recent study that allows customer satisfaction professionals to show their  management teams  in order to maintain the focus on excellent service.

What is your opinion? Leave your comments below.

Many thanks to Jim Clemmer, Management Guru and Author whose newsletter pointed me to this news article. See more customer service articles from Jim Clemmer here.

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Adele Berenstein

Adele Berenstein is an Experienced Customer Satisfaction Executive, recently retired from a Large Global IT Organization after a long productive management career including Sales, Marketing, Services, teaching and education center management and most recently, 19 years in customer satisfaction management. She turned around divisions with customer satisfaction problems, implemented measurable improvements and management systems, and implemented programs to prevent problems from ever affecting customers.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.