It may seem silly to ask, but is your customer service negatively affecting your customer loyalty? With all the competition in the market place and today's demanding customers, this is a question that every business should be asking themselves. You may be thinking to yourself, "My customer service is great! I hardly ever get a complaint call." It's all fine and dandy if that's the actual case, but many cases a customer is simply not voicing their complaints or the message is just not getting through. Think about it from the customer's point of view. For example, you go into your normal grocery store expecting the same level of service you always receive. However, this time you cannot find any help locating the marshmallows, the lines are extremely long and the cashier is rude to you. How many times has a scenario like this happened to you? How many times have you voiced your displeasure to the management team? An "AMA [American Management Association] study revealed that 90% of clients who ceased doing business with a company made no attempt to tell the firm why".

With many customers, they expect you to put forth the effort to improve your businesses' customer service without having to be told to do so. Although it may seem like your customers expect you to be a mind reader, in actuality they simply want to see that you care about both your business and your customers. Did you know that 68% of all lost business is due to poor customer service? Think about a time when a company has wowed you; that extra little bit of customer service probably left a lasting impression. Which business would you rather run; the one that gives the extra customer service and keeps clients, or the one that does not seem to care and is constantly spending money to gain new customers?

By now you are probably wondering what you can do in order to prevent or maybe even reverse poor customer service in your company. Well, there are a couple of options. Option number one; retrain and beef up your staff. Although this can be a costly and lengthy process, it is well worth it. However, if you just don't have the time or money to be able to do something of that nature then take a look at Option number two; hire a live answering service. Not only do next generation call centers like VoiceNation Live pride themselves on excellent phone answering service, but they also have operators available to answer your phones 24 hours a day. It may not seem like a big deal, but think about how often your receptionist is on break. In most states, an employee working 8 hours is required to have at least one 15 minute break and a 30 minute lunch. That's 45 minutes where your receptionist is not available to even answer the phone; not to mention restroom breaks. Also, most companies only employ one receptionist. Unlike VoiceNation Live, who has an unlimited number of operators, a receptionist can only handle so many calls at once. So think about when your phones are ringing off the hook. How many of your customers are sitting on hold for extended amounts of time before being greeted by an overworked and exhausted receptionist? In the confusion of multiple ringing lines, how often is a message taken down wrong or not even delivered to the appropriate party? How many of your customers do you think simply get annoyed, hang up and take their business elsewhere?

No matter if you are a fortune 500 company or just starting out with only 2 employees, customer service is a must. To take a quote from Sam Walton, "There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else". The like between excellent customer service and customer loyalty is apparent. If you want to save both time and money but still get the results you are looking for, then hire VoiceNation Live.

Percentages taken from:

Customer Service Crossing