Meter Your Customer Service

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” according to Mae West, preeminent American sex symbol of the 1930s. Still, an international study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, which is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, indicates that Ms. West’s advice doesn’t hold well when it comes to retail customer service. Too much customer service can be a financial drag on a business.
     About 75,000 people who had interacted with customer service staff were surveyed in the study, and hundreds of customer service staff members were interviewed. The results? By and large, what customers seek is not an ever-escalating drive to surprise and delight them. They want to be dazzled by customer service, all right, but what does the trick is for the retailer to find ways to simplify problem resolution.
     A more formal study by researchers at University of Mannheim in Germany and University of Texas-Austin found that customers who are adequately satisfied are willing to pay higher prices than are customers who are barely satisfied. But the researchers also found that developing customer willingness to pay even higher prices generally requires ensuring those customers are consistently very highly satisfied. The costs of doing that might make it unprofitable. Your best course might be to be satisfied with delivering adequate customer satisfaction.
     Businesses have found that good customer service can distinguish them from the competition and so earn them additional sales. Yet it is akin to superstition to believe that if some customer service is good, that loads of customer service must be great.
     To be sure, some retailers gain success by pampering their clientele in ways that create legendary tales. It’s a form of niche retailing which requires premium pricing. And there are deep-discount retailers who are financially successful in the face of legendary flawed customer service. Meter and regularly monitor your business’s level of customer service to find what works best for your store personality and target markets.
     Just as it is superstitious to believe that if a little is good, more is better, it’s superstitious to stop trying out variations on the customer service you offer. Mae West would agree, I think. You see, she also said, “Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”

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