Customer Service

By Mike Southon Rock Your Life Global Sage www.mikesouthon.com

Apparently there are quite big things happening in Europe, but I want to leave that to the economists and take a look at one of the stories lower down the business pages.

The story that interested me is this. According to campaign group Consumer Focus, all the major energy companies (apart from Scottish Power – well done!) experienced a large rise in customer complaints year-on-year in the past twelve months. Top honours go to EDF Energy, who have achieved a magnificent 91% increase in complaints; and I suspect that wasn’t from a very low baseline, either!

8 Rules For Good Customer Service

Written by Susan Ward – www.about.com

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.

4 Ways To Provide Customer Service That Outshines Your Competitors

Written by Susan Ward – www.about.com

There’s no real secret to getting your customers to come back. All you need to do is provide customer service that exceeds your customers’ expectations and outshines your competitors’ customer service.

Acumen Research Group surveyed more than 1,000 Canadian retail, banking and telco customers to determine what made them behave loyally and what made them leave long-term relationships; 43 percent of respondents abandoned a provider to which they declared themselves loyal because of a negative experience with a staff person, and 30 percent of respondents reported that having the feeling they are not treated as valued customers by the staff has been the main reason for taking their business elsewhere. (“Keep Them Coming Back” by Joan A. Pajunen in Canadian Retailer).