Top 5 Customer Service Links for 12-7-09

by Heidi Miller, Social Media Manager

Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the five best customer service posts from the last week. On me. :-) This week, many articles focused on the basics: what is frustrating to a customer and how can you build better relationships so that when frustrating experiences occur, the customers don't walk?:

• In a recent survey, Aurix named the biggest call center frustrations from customers. Some aren't a surprise, and some are telling about company's upselling practices:

The lists of complaints included “impolite” and “nasty behavior,” “tactlessness” and “obvious efforts to sell products while evading answers to pertinent questions.”

• In another telling survey, Forrester's Andrew McInnes reported that most customers expect poor customer service experiences as a matter of course. Not surprisingly, the lowest marks were in computers and health insurance policies, where only 30% of consumers expected customer service to be easy. It's hard not to add a "C'mon, folks; we can do better than THIS" comment to this report.

• Fortunately, Bill Self in the Thinking Like a Customer blog addresses the issue, not with generalities but by citing examples of companies "flying under the radar" and providing single-minded, narrowly-targeted customer service in specific markets. His solution? Lower your risk by getting close to your customers.

• Similarly, Brent Leary whipped out some stats to support the model of relationship-building with customers in a great post entitled It Takes a Village to Raise a Customer. Some telling statistics:

A recent survey commissioned by e-mail marketing provider Campaigner found the top challenge facing small business owners today is customer acquisition and retention -- by a landslide.  The 2009 State of Small Business Online Marketing Survey questioned over 250 North American small business owners with 20 employees or less.  And customer acquisition/retention was the top business challenge of 50 percent of those surveyed.  Growing revenue was a distant second with 15 percent, followed by improving cash flow and maintaining profitability -- at 9 percent and 8 percent respectively.

[bold mine] See that? The top business challenge was retaining customers. And since we know that customers make decisions based on service over price, beefing up customer service seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?

• Lest you take this week's lovely link list for a customer service love-fest, check this out: Patrick Maguire recently launched a blog positing that the customer isn't king--nor is she always right. ServerNotServant.com is his site, where he blogs chapters from his upcoming book as the "voice for service industry workers everywhere" and "a case for human-to-human service and civility."