Is great customer service worth it?
Wow customer service, delighting the customer, our customer journey, however you say it, customer experience is an endlessly fascinating subject. Just running a business, happily harnessing individual skill to corporate goals, is difficult. Keeping that mutually beneficial balance while facing the modern consumer spectrum of flibbertigibbet to Weeping Angel is a Rubik’s Cube in mittens with a two-minute time limit. Wearing a fresh meat swimsuit at feeding time.
Researching my questions for a roundtable discussion on this subject, I realised that a lot of pro-customer experience writing (and there is ONLY pro-customer experience writing) is conjecture, bias and opinion. We believe that making the customer feel a million dollars is worth it because… well, because.
This article is a good example. It is well written and feels right, but quotes the Global Leaders of Customer Experience Management Survey (“85% of senior business leaders agreed that price, delivery, and lead times are no longer effective marketing business strategies”) to argue that customer experience “is your last hope” for a competitive advantage. Which is a bit like quoting the Global Leaders of Meat Swimsuit Sales Survey in an article about open water racing (“85% of swimmers wearing a meat swimsuit set personal records at feeding time”).
So if it’s conjecture, bias and opinion you’re after, then pull up a seat. Here’s why excellent customer experience is impossible to achieve for 90% of businesses, and why it doesn’t matter anyway.
Short-term goals count against it
At the end of every year, you have to be left with more than you spent. Randi Zuckerberg once tweeted the entrepreneur’s dilemma: “Maintaining friendships. Building a great company. Spending time w/family. Staying fit. Getting sleep. Pick 3.” Let’s change that to the CEO’s dilemma: Marketing. Sales. IT. Product development. Customer service. Pick 4. And you have 12 months to make a financial difference.
It costs 5x more to acquire a customer than to retain one
A professional debunking of this rubbish can be found here, but a semi-professional debunking has already been done by anyone with a mobile phone contract or a mortgage who has heard the phrase, “sorry, that deal is new customers only”.
People love WOW service
Do they? Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, but was voted the worst of the 100 biggest brands serving the British market. People love the deal, not the service.
This, then, is where we will start our roundtable conversation: is customer experience a provable competitive advantage, and what is its rate of return? I’ll let you know.
