Why do Companies All Believe They Deliver Awesome Customer Service and 99 Percent of Customers Disagree

I find that most CEOs and top management believe their organization delivers awesome customer service. If you ask all 330 million people in the US to identify five customer service leaders most would not be able to come up with five.

I started developing in 1979, Feelings, the world’s first customer service program. It was released in January 1980 and was all based on a very simple concept. When you provide awesome customer service, customers come back, they spend more money and they bring their friends. When you have poor customer service customers don’t buy your product or service and they don’t recommend their friends. I think customer service is worse today than in 1979. Covid gave everyone an excuse to give up on customer service.

The economy is probably going to tighten up and will become more difficult. The easiest way to combat this is with highly trained employees who deliver great customer service. There are no educational institutions anywhere in the world that teach customer service. There is little chance a previous employer will have trained your employees on customer service. The customer service course employees took 5-10 years ago is out of sight and out of mind.

Most employees believe they do a great job. The customer service surveys most firms use are a waste of time and money. No one reads them or does anything with them. Many of the questions are not relevant. Most employees are not engaged, and simply just show up.

What would happen when people asked for a company that delivers awesome customer service and they all recommended you? This is word-of-mouth advertising. It is 100 times less expensive than paid advertising and 100 times more effective.

You can start training your staff now on customer service. September is a time everyone loves to start training their staff. Children are back in school and vacations are over. Planting the seeds for excellent customer service now will bear fruit with increased sales and repeat business in the future. 

For more information on John Tschohl and the Service Quality Institute, visit customer-service.com.