Great Customer Service: Overrated?

Many huge, successful companies consistently “blow it” when it comes to customer service. Why then, do people keep coming back for more? I'll show you why provided great service may be overrated in…

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Terrible service. A certain fast-food establishment with golden arches screwing up your order. Internet service providers leaving you on hold for half a day. Airlines losing your bags or cancelling your flight last minute via text.

These huge, successful companies consistently “blow it” when it comes to customer service. Why then, do people keep coming back for more? I’ll show you why and prove a few points along the way. First off, know this…

Subpar Customer Service Isn’t a Dealbreaker

Many gurus and entrepreneurs preach taking care of the customer. They say that the customer is #1 or always right. Partially true.

In reality, tons of other factors other than great service determine why a customer stays or leaves for a competitor.

  • The customer found a better product
  • The customer found a better deal
  • The customer heard something from a friend
  • The customer wanted attention from a competitor
  • The customer wanted to “mix things up”

What’s the point of listing these out? It shows you how many things go through a customer’s head when they make decisions. It also gives you an opportunity as a business owner to look into every aspect of your marketing and sales.

What can you do to improve right now? Break down your 5 Ways and learn what really holds your business back from earning more customers, revenue, and profit. You’ll see that great service is only part of the equation.

Delight > Satisfaction

Ready for a crazy statistic about customer service? A whopping 96% of customers who receive bad service won’t say anything. No complaints. They will just leave.

If you want loyal customers, you need to shoot way beyond satisfaction and aim for customer delight instead.

Our customer delight formula looks like this:

Positive Result > Customer Expectation = Delight

When you frame it this way, you realize two things:

  1. You need to focus on more positive results for your customers
  2. You need to create more favorable expectations (many customers have unrealistic expectations).

Those who sell their house, for example, have very unrealistic expectations of what they can sell their house for, according to a lot of real estate agents. Trying to meet these excessive expectations by “listing high and then lowering the price when the property doesn’t sell” is a surefire way to make customers upset.

4 Ways to Create More Favorable Expectations

Great customer experience starts with creating favorable environments, which then raises the customers’ expectations.

Educate Your Customer: Provide them with the knowledge needed to create a realistic assessment of the available options. Do this as soon as the engagement begins. Do this in your printed materials and on your website wherever possible. The importance of verbal information is frequently overlooked (i.e. dismissed as self-serving).

Make a Unique Offer: People will only assess you based on your pricing and your sales methods if you don’t have something unique to offer.

Stick to What You’re Good At: Don’t attempt to be everything to everyone. You’ll lose your niche and raise the chance of expectation gaps.

Target People Who Value Your Unique Offer: Create a buyer persona to constantly dial in your offer. This will ensure that what you provide and what customers expect closely align.

All the companies I alluded to earlier focus more on these things. As a result, they set good enough expectations that customers keep coming back.

Definitely do NOT start providing bad service to your customers – that’s not the point. Do start focusing on customer engagement and delight.

If you can keep a customer engaged and buying from you repeatedly, great! Let’s work on that first.

We’ll identify the key metrics holding your business back, accelerate your growth, and provide the ultimate accountability. We guarantee results.

Ready to get laser focused on growing your customer base this year?

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