Are you willing to lose 40% of your dissatisfied customers?

When you think about the most important aspects of your customer service process, what comes to mind? Are you most concerned with how long a customer has to stay on hold before they’re helped?

Are you convinced that personalized service and courteous attention are most important to your customers? Or maybe you think customers really want the shortest call times possible.

Think again.

While all of these are common ways that companies tend to assess customer satisfaction, they are not the main issues for most customers. As a top payroll services provider, AmCheck uncovered recent survey findings from the Convergys U.S. Customer Scorecard that reveal that customers want two things when they call a company for service:

1. They want the staff member to be knowledgeable.
2. They want their needs addressed on the first call.

Simple, right? The question is, are you currently measuring or tracking these two critical attributes? If you’re not, you should be. According to the results from the Convergys survey, roughly 40% of customers who have a bad customer service experience will stop doing business with that company. That’s an awful lot of existing customers to risk losing.

AmCheck has found that, when companies focus their efforts on reducing hold times and call times, they don’t do much to improve or even impact customer service. They just cause representatives to race through calls; the very thing that frustrates customers the most. Clearly, customers are willing to hold and even put up with a longer call if the representative knows what they’re doing and can handle the issue within that first contact.

So, instead of focusing on outdated metrics like hold and call times and personalized service, AmCheck payroll services recommends that companies spend their time training customer service agents well and empowering them to make important decisions. Clearly, both can make a tremendous impact on customer satisfaction and retention. It’s either that or risk losing 40% of unhappy customers. Are you willing to do that?