Providing an outstanding customer service
can determine a competitive advantage
among businesses. If handled with negligence,
customer service can damage the business’s
operations. Service statistics presented by
Gerson[5] indicate the following:
• Only 4 per cent of customers complain,
which means that a business may never
hear from 96 per cent of its customers, and
91 per cent of customers feel that complaining
will not do them any good.
• One in five dissatisfied customers will tell
20 others about their problem.
• Satisfied customers, or customers who
have had their complaints resolved, will tell
between three and five people about their
positive experience.
• It takes 12 positive service incidents to
amend a negative one.
• It costs five to six times more to attract new
customers than to keep old ones. Additionally,
customer loyalty and the lifetime value
of a customer can be worth up to ten times
as much as the price of a single purchase.
• Businesses which provide superior customer
service can charge more, realize
greater profits, increase their market share
and have customers willingly pay more for
their products simply because of the good
service. A business can gain an average of
6 per cent a year in market share by providing
good service.
• The life-time value of a customer, or the
amount of purchases that a customer
would make over a period of ten years, is
worth more than the cost of returning their
purchase price of one item.
• Customer service is governed by the rule of
tens. If it takes $10,000 to get a new customer,
it takes ten seconds to lose one.
• Sixty-eight per cent of customers stop
doing business with a certain organization
because they are upset with the treatment
they have received.