In the days of old, service excellence was a term that rarely exists. However, in today’s competitive business landscape, businesses are increasingly looking to provide service excellence to customers; to consistently meet and even exceed customers' expectations where possible. Customers now expect service excellence in all their interactions with businesses; failing which they may never deal with that business again.
Research shows that 72% of customers would gladly share a good experience with 6 or more other individuals. Relating that to the world of referral marketing (i.e. word-of-mouth marketing), this becomes a critical element where 74% of customers see word-of-mouth) as a key influencing factor in their buying decisions.
Some challenges that businesses may encounter when their service excellence is not up to par include:
- Loss of customers and thus revenue; research shows that 69% of customers stop dealing with a business just from one bad experience.
- Damage to the business’ reputation and credibility including long-term damage especially in today’s social media world.
- Increased costs to rectify areas which had failed the customer. These may include refunds, cost of managing returns, repeating work (and thus incurring manpower & time costs) etc.
