Can you put a price on customer service?

Catherine Paneral

Jour 4460

March 14, 2012

Blog Nine—Can you put a price on customer service?

“Everything that can be counted doesn’t necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted,” Albert Einstein said. This should be greatly considered when developing a relationship with your client, customer or target audience. I definitely know how important ROI can be but if you cannot build a lasting relationship with the person who is going to boost your ROI is going to go nowhere.

“We live in a society that puts the dollar above the customer. That is, corners are cut and customer service is subservient to getting “paid.” Don’t get me wrong, I like getting paid as much as the next person but too many times we question the return before we implement any kind of customer service process that influences both repeat business and word-of-mouth,” says David Johnson, blogger for Social Media for Businesses.

Companies need to remember to focus on the ROE, Return on Experience. You can’t really track the ROE as well as the ROI but the ROE is what is going to increase your ROI. It is important to build lasting customer relationships.

According to Johnson’s blog he states, “While there are ways to track a repeat customer and word-of-mouth, it’s not always straight forward. I don’t think anybody would argue that customer service goes a long way to determining if a particular customer is going to become a loyal customer or not. We’ve all been subject to poor customer service and thought to ourselves, “I’m never coming back here again!” The opposite is also true.”

I worked at a bar for the last two years. The owner invested lots of money in advertisements and maintenance for keeping up the look of the bar so customers would continue to return. No matter how nice the place looked though, the wait staff had complete control of which way the customers experience would turn out. Wait staff gets paid $2.13 an hour so any money they hope to make will come from the customer service they offer. I am a strong believer in delivering good customer service because I know how much bad customer service makes me want to explode. Moving on, I had customers who would purposely come order from my bar top because they knew they would get better service from me over another bartender (I am friendlier than most people.) The point is people will remember the good service they received from someone. It plays a big role on whether or not the customer will return. How many times have you found a restaurant with delicious food but received horrible service? What are the chances of you going back there when you don’t feel valued at all?

You can’t track ROE like you could ROI but you can focus your efforts in making sure you and your employees deliver the best customer service possible because without them, where will your company be? Down the toilet.

Source:

Johnson, David. "Why Relationships Matter And ROI Doesn’t." Why Relationships Matter And ROI Doesn’t. Persuasive Social, 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://persuasivesocial.com/social-media-for-business/why-relationships-matter-and-roi-doesnt/>.