Poor customer service is costing your business more than you think. Things like not acting on customer problems, not acting promptly, poor attention or inexperienced agents constitute poor customer service.

And now with the emergence of social media, the customer service landscape has changed drastically. Customer service is no longer just limited to a call center with agents responding to customers over the phone. In fact, much of the customer support is happening on social media where there’s a larger audience. Facebook pages for example have the review tab where a customer can share a good or poor customer service experience.

Personally, I’ve been compelled to avoid one of the local retailers because of the many negative reviews it gets from its customers. I might not be the only whose choice of where to shop has been affected by those reviews. I recently encountered another poor customer service experience at one of the local banks. It was my turn to get served and when I got to the counter, the guy who I assumed was the teller was just seated there with earphones in his ears and seemed not to notice that I was standing there to be served until I had to ask him if he’s the teller, just to be sure so that I don’t misjudge him afterwards.

Take another example of a restaurant. I have friends who would be obliged to leave a tip if they were served well. Would I give a tip for a good customer experience? Yes, because great customer service is sometimes hard to come by. But if waiters or waitresses are trained on customer service skills, they would do their job and no one wouldn’t really feel necessitated to give them a tip because it would be the norm.

Poor customer service has a significant and measurable impact on financial outcomes for a business. Apart from having a direct impact on growth, revenue and profits, it can significantly increase costs and sometimes lead to other negative social and community outcomes.

Here are some of the ways poor customer service is hampering your business;

1. Unhappy customers share their bad customer experiences with their friends. This automatically puts off potential customers.
2. Customer retention drops significantly as they move on to your competitors offering a better service. Always put in mind that customers have a lot of options when they want a certain product or service.
3. Your business will definitely need to spend more money in acquiring new customers. This might be through advertisements. The end result? Burning your bottom line.
4. Negative online reviews can be damaging to a business, and they don’t go away. Before making reservations at your hotel, many travelers will look up your business on various travel-review sites to see what your past customers had to say about their visit.

As a business or organization, you can ensure good customer service by hiring competent agents, being proactive about responding, providing multi-channel support and personalizing the customer service experience journey with minimal or no automation at all.

Remember it takes several positive experiences to make up for one negative experience.

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