More and more pressure mounts on organisations to improve customer service.  But what constitutes good service if we all have different standards and ideals?

Did you know that a typical business only hears from 4 percent of its dissatisfied customers? The other 96 percent quietly go away. Of this 96 percent, 68 percent never reveal their dissatisfaction because they perceive an attitude of indifference in the owner, manager or employee.

This statistic is particularly dangerous for businesses because if a dissatisfied customer can’t express their complaints to a business, they’ll express them through other outlets such as friends, neighbours and family. A typical dissatisfied customer will tell eight to ten people about their problem. One in five will tell 20.  It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for one negative incident. Seven out of ten complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favour.  If you resolve it on the spot, 95 percent will do business with you again. (Source: Art Waller, Regional Department Head for Utah State University).

On this topic I thought you may be interested to know The Institute of Customer Service is once again running National Customer Service week which attracts enormous interest.  It is designed to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays within an organisation. It is also an opportunity to say a big thank you to those who work in customer service for a job well done.

For how you can get involved visit http://nationalcustomerserviceweek.com/

Providing great customer service gets people noticed and makes it a pleasure to do business with the organisation. And we all know what usually happens when people don’t bother about their customers. That’s right – they lose them.

So ask your customers what they think constitutes good service, see how you are performing and then make the promise to deliver on this.  Let us know your results, feedback and comments on this please.