I’m Mad as Hell and…

I am often reminded of my father’s two rules of business:

1. The customer is always right.
2. When that is not the case, refer to rule number 1.

I was reminded of these rules recently when reading an article in Advertising Age. The publication reported findings from a recent report by the research firm Yankelovich titled “Consumers in Control”.

Some of the interesting stats were:

82% of those interviewed said it was important to speak with a live person, with more than one in four (27%) indicating they’d even be willing to pay extra to have one.

75% believe businesses care more about selling existing products than coming up with what they want, up from 58% in 2004.

62% feel that service people don’t care much about their needs, up from 52% since 2004.

71% said they would walk out of a store even if it offered exactly what they were seeking if treated badly.

People are not only taking their business elsewhere, but also lashing out online. Blogs and YouTube have enabled more consumers to voice their distaste.

The article ended with this sobering comment; “If you get stained by bad customer service, it’s really hard to turn that around.” 

Keep that stain off of your business!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 6:39 am and is filed under Customer Experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.