Industry Trends & Insights

Cloud has created new expectations for customer service

By / November 14, 2019

Customers have shifted to new expectations

The customer service landscape has been shifting for a few years. The rapid growth of technology has also fostered new expectations when it comes to customer service. We’re now in the era of the customer.

Companies lost 75 billion in 2017 alone, due to customers switching to competitors due to bad service. And customers are vocal about it. An incredible one third of Americans have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service. Product and price advantage have become scarce because they can be easily duplicated.

Providing stronger customer service is now where the advantage lies.

Happy customers = growth

A very happy customer is probably much more valuable than most companies realize. Companies that excel at the customer experience, consistently grow revenues anywhere from 4% to 8% above their market average. That’s because a superior experience earns stronger loyalty according to Bain Research. This turns customers into promoters who have a lifetime value of 6 to 14 times that of someone who has had a bad experience.

A whopping 96% percent of business leaders agree that customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Customer service is also cited as the number one factor that impacts trust between a business and a vendor.

The customer experience > price & product

If you’ve learned anything from these stats, you’ll see that it takes some seriously good customer support to stand out from the crowd. Times have changed, and the support experience is now more important than price and product.

It’s also important to remember that today’s customers have a lot of power to determine whether or not your business does well. One of the reasons for this is because they have more options than ever.

In fact, according to Salesforce.com, 75% of customers also prefer shopping with businesses that offer personalized experiences and support. That means going above and beyond in the support category, can mean more profitability for your business.

Support initiatives can double revenue

Research shows that companies earning 1 million annually, can expect to earn, on average, an additional seven hundred thousand within three years of investing in a better customer experience. That’s right, support initiatives have the potential to double revenue within 36 months because customers heavily value the customer experience, and will pay more to make it a positive one. This underscores the importance of good consistent support in today’s marketplace.

With eighty nine percent of business expected to compete mainly on customer experience, organizations that take customer experience seriously will stand out from the noise and win loyal customers over. But, in order to deliver an excellent customer experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before.

Leverage the cloud to satisfy customers

The work you put toward helping your customers understand the critical nature of providing the best service, trickles down. It might be implementing the proper customer service platform, setting up support chat, or simply understanding the latest tools required to properly support their customer base.

Having the customer satisfaction discussion is key. Many businesses still have the mindset of product and production, and end up putting customer service second or third. As a trusted partner, understanding their product, procedures, and their customers, is the important factor when determining the solutions that will set them apart when it comes to the satisfaction of their own customer base.

Cloud based customer service SaaS is plentiful and the right solutions exist for your customer. These solutions offer the fastest time to market, ease of use, and are feature rich. Get in touch with your representative to explore one of the many solutions available today.

AppSmart

Phone: 1-866-456-3211

Email: partnersupport@appsmart.com

Resources

Mosley, Megan. “25 Customer Service Statistics Worth Thinking About.” Referral Rock Blog, 17 Apr. 2020, referralrock.com/blog/customer-service-statistics/.