Customer Service Failure Gold!

Did you mess up again?

Have you ever thought about the marketing value of knowing the mistakes you have made in the past? I am here to tell you that learning about your mistakes is a gold mine of marketing wealth. Most of us would like to think that we are providing good services to everyone who takes a chance on using our businesses. Unfortunately, this is rarely true for absolutely everyone who patronizes our businesses.

If you are competent and have a pleasant disposition, odds are that you are able to meet the needs of the vast majority of your clients. However, none of us are one hundred percent successful and the gold is found in understanding what caused us to lose clients. Somewhere, your marketing and customer service systems failed you and more than likely it will happen again unless you address it.

The real problem here is studies have shown that up to 96 percent of people who experience a bad interaction with your business will never spontaneously complain to you. Why is it a bad thing you don’t have to deal with their complaints? Because they just leave and never come back! Despite the fact that they don’t complain to you, they will be more than happy to tell everyone they know to stay away from your business.

Typically for every complaint you hear about, about 25 others are unhappy with you and don’t bother to tell you. Again, they just leave! If that isn’t enough to motivate you, realize that up to 95 percent of them would have continued to patronize your business if you had resolved the problem quickly.

In today’s economy setting up a system to track client feedback about your business may be the most cost effective marketing task you will ever accomplish. It really isn’t that hard to do. First you need to have a system to track who patronizes your business and how often. Second you must have their contact information. Finally, you must develop a system to actively solicit their feedback about the experience with your business. Of course there are a lot more details to put all this together, but the overall system is that easy. The vast majority of business never bother to set it up!