Why Your Retail Business Needs the Best Customer Service

Successful retailers know that delivering excellent customer service is key to their success.

In an era where a single review on social media can have lasting consequences, it’s imperative to provide a good customer experience. These positive outcomes are the root cause of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, customer loyalty.

Here are a few statistics that help illustrate why customer service is so important.

The Good

Loyalty pays: 86% of consumers will pay more for better customer experience.

Customers talk: When you provide your customers with great service, 81% will tell their friends and family about it.

Trust counts: 73% of firms trust recommendations from friends and family, while only 19% trust direct mail.

The Bad

Opinions matter: More than 60% of customers are influenced by other consumers’ comments about companies.

One strike and you’re out: 81% of Americans have decided never to do business with a company again because of poor customer service.

They’ll hang up on a poor experience: 6/10 Customers have ditched a company because its telephone customer service has been so bad.

So how are YOU doing?

It’s often hard to grasp exactly how your customers perceive your brand. Onholdwith.com is a great resource to see the impact a call center has on customer complaints – it details Twitter complaints from customers on hold, by industry or company.

For example, take a look at the retail category.  Today’s top offenders include Walmart, Best Buy and Ikea:

What do they all have in common?  They could have avoided complaints like these if they employed a call-back solution like Fonolo.

By giving callers the option to replace hold-time with a call-back (for example, “press 1 to receive a call-back when the next agent is available“), companies can improve the customer experience while reducing cost-per-call.

Delivering the best customer experience while saving money is a win/win proposition.