Be Proactive Before Your Customers Define You
Many studies support the finding that happy customers tell 4-8 people about their positive experiences. Dissatisfied customers tell up to 20 people within 24 hours when they are dissatisfied with the customer experience they had while doing business with you.
There is also the fact that 5% of your customers are being convinced by their family and friends to try one of your competitors. There is also a new phenomenon at work now – social media. With social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, each dissatisfied customer has the potential to reach thousands of people in a very short amount of time. Satisfied customers do tell of their experiences, but the dissatisfied will go out of their way to spread the news to anyone who will listen.
This being said, companies can be defined by their dissatisfied customers before they even realize it is happening. There are several major companies that have full time staff monitoring the social media comments made about them on the web.
It is time for companies to take a proactive approach and partner with their customers. Asking for feedback and implementing it when possible will define the company as being customer centric and focusing their products and services around the needs of the customers. By finding out where problems are starting to emerge, issues can be resolved before reaching the point of dissatisfaction. The customers that feel that they are taken seriously in their feedback will become proponents of the company and develop a stronger loyalty over those that never had any issue at all.
In proportion, having fewer negative reports about a company will save advertising dollars and cost much less than doing damage control. It costs between 8-20 times as much money to gain a new customer than it does to keep the current customers happy. Why not keep those dollars in the company and reinvest it toward a customer focused approach by partnering with your customers and increasing customer service?
