“The customer is always right”, so goes the age old business maxim. Companies have been aiming to achieve customer satisfaction through different angles such as improving their products’ quality, offering promos, slashing prices, etc. all of which are valid tactics.

However, there are limits to the resources you can pour in to better your products, and you can only go so low with your prices before you stop making profits. The avenue that you need to take to bring happiness to your customers without draining your finances is customer service.

The Importance of Customer Service

No matter how good you think your product is, you will inevitably have a customer running into a problem with it. How you handle that problem is crucial to keeping that customer from deciding to take his/her money elsewhere. According to Echo’s 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer, 55% of US consumers who planned on making a business transaction changed their minds because of a poor customer service experience.

More Efficient Workforce

It’s not just your customers that have a happier experience when you provide good customer service. When your employees see that the people they’re serving are satisfied, they will take more pride in the quality of their work.  They will be more motivated to keep doing a good job, leading to better overall performances and reducing absenteeism and employee attrition.

Standing Out Amidst Competition

Forrester’s Customer Experience Index for 2012 showed that 64% of the 160 brands in the survey only got ratings of OK, Poor, and Very Poor when it comes to customer experience. Just by providing quality customer service, you already enjoy a distinct advantage over the majority of the competition. You also benefit from people who are already having a bad experience from other businesses and are thus looking to switch to a brand that can give them what they want. You can be an industry leader with how happy you make your customers feel.

Balance High Prices

It’s no surprise to see some of your competition offering prices that are much lower than your product’s. Instead of getting sucked into a pricing battle, you can leverage the quality of your customer service to justify the cost of your products. With a proven track record for delivering excellent service, you can expect to stay ahead of your competitors even with higher prices.

Increased Sales

Satisfied patrons don’t just keep buying your products. They also spread the message to their friends and family about how well you’ve been treating them, and nothing is more valuable than the positive word coming from a loved one. Those are qualified leads that have been primed to become new customers. This is proven by Forrester’s Business Impact of Customer Service 2013 study that shows that a 10% improvement of an enterprise level business’ customer experience can lead to higher revenue amounting to more than $1 billion.

Considering all the money at stake in making customers happy, there is certainly no doubting the truth to the adage that “the customer is always right”.