21st Century Business Ltd say Customer complaints lead to customer retention

It is a proven fact that in customer terms, retention is more cost effective than acquisition. Keeping a customer for life is worth much more than the value of their first purchase.

Businesses spend so much time finding new customers instead of looking at ways of keeping their existing ones! This is doing things the hard (and expensive) way.

Every business pays a cost to acquire their customers, yet most are blissfully complacent with regards to customer retention.

The problem is obviously about losing customers, but this is usually due to one of either two causes, each demanding a different solution:
1.a form of dissatisfaction
2.failure to motivate loyalty due to neglect

Do you know what your customers think? Do you know who your customers are?

Customers are all around you…They are the people who buy services and/or goods from you, they are your suppliers, colleagues, contacts and your staff!

The silent customer is the easiest to lose. Most dissatisfied customers don’t complain - THEY WALK - taking their business to your competitors. Worse still, your dissatisfied customer will probably wade through their colleagues, family and friends, broadcasting how unprincipled or incompetent your business is. In case you didn’t know, bad news travels about five times further than good news.

Resolving complaints is truly effective.Research has shown that customers who perceive their complaint has been dealt with satisfactorily are amongst the most loyal thereafter.

Addressing a customer’s grievance with honesty and integrity is as good as over delivering on the value you promised them in the first place.

By encouraging these silent customers to voice their complaints through a clear channel, you create the chance to redeem yourself in their eyes and restore their faith in your business. Think of your complaints channel as the means to catch customers who are about to leave. Allow them to vent their frustration - make them believe that you really appreciate their feedback and they will get an immediate and satisfactory response. Provide these silent customers with a red carpet to your complaints team.

Make your complaints channel a very structured affair and lavish it with quality control. A highly conscious approach to generating complaints policy practices will pay off in stark retention rate improvements, clearly impacting sales figures. Staff attitude is crucial in achieving this.

A growing number of customer complaints are caused by fragmentation within a large organisation. There is nothing more annoying than ringing up to complain and being passed onto another department.

Implementing customer care procedures is crucial for any business and it doesn’t have to cost the earth to deliver exceptional customer care.

If you are interested in giving your company the edge in it’s approach to customer service excellence, then call the Jayne Allman from the 21st Century Business team, in confidence between 8am-10pm on 0845 838 2021 or email us at info@21stcenturybusiness.co.uk

Contact Information

Jayne Allman

Managing Director

21st Century Business Ltd

Contact via E-mail