Should Customer Service Be A High Priority?

[Vercingetorix]

*Note: I intend to initiate comprehensive community discussion on a complex subject which-(*imo)-necessitates my initial provisions for information & examples likely exceeding single OP allowances. Unfortunately my posts must now await 'Moderator Approval' so I don't know whether this will be declined or approved and I may not immediately be available to provide followup posts with the full scope of information I hope to begin with.

*Subject: The primary subject of general discussion thereof intended here is regarding Customer Service in relation to the Overall Health, Short & Long-Term Viability or Detriment for a Business.

*Motivation: The motivator for posting this is specifically intending to encourage and enable opportunity for building foundations of a meaningfully reciprocated communication bridge between 'The Customer' & 'The Business',...or to at least raise awareness of-(*imho)-the critical importance for prioritizing such.

*Intent: I will state upfront that to some degree I myself may be negatively biased with respect of XF-likely so due to what I subjectively perceive as being Negative Customer Service Experiences—Yet I am generally optimistic and will effort for maintaining logically reasoned objectivity as best I can,...because negativity breeds negativity-thus draining all our potentials—whereas positivity vitalizes our potentials. As such my fundamental hope is for doing what little I can for [re]vitalizing online discussion forums as well as all members, customers, clients, employees, staff, owners, developers, investors & so forth—and in this case especially inclusive of all Xenforo personnel—each of whom together we comprise the current totality of XF Communities Worldwide.

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To begin with, here is a link to an insightful-(*~2min)-article @Kaizo.com addressing:

The importance of customer satisfaction (+stats to prove it)

Spoiler: Full Article Link @Kaizo.com

The importance of customer satisfaction (+ stats to prove it) - Kaizo

The importance of customer satisfaction levels cannot be questioned. But what makes it the most important metric in customer service?

kaizo.com

*Additional note: I intend copying the articles pertinent content directly into the #2 post below for ease of access, as well as presenting actual examples in subsequent posts, hopefully I can do so without delay.)

 

[Vercingetorix]

[From Kaizo.com]
"The importance of customer satisfaction (+ stats to prove it)"

•"The importance of customer satisfaction cannot be overstated. There is a direct correlation between how happy customers are and how much money a business makes. Your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) affects repeat purchases rates and customer loyalty, word of mouth referrals, and helps to inform business decisions."

•"According to this study by InfoQuest, the repeat purchase rate of "totally satisfied" customers is 3 to 10 times higher than that of "somewhat satisfied" customers. Knowing your customer service ratings provides a far greater chance of understanding what your potential revenue will be."

•"In this Kaizo.com article, we'll take a closer look at what customer satisfaction is and why it's crucial to strive for positive customer satisfaction results."

•"What is customer satisfaction?"

•"Customer satisfaction is how happy your customers are with your company, product or services, and the assistance they receive before and after making a purchase. It's also a way for your customer service team to ensure their actions are producing consistent results of happy customers."

•"The key is to define what customer satisfaction means to your company using a specified rating system, then identify KPIs that are important to your overall customer service goals."

•"Your customers' satisfaction levels are typically found by asking the question on the phone or sending a survey afterwards. You'll need to identify and communicate if those ratings will be stars, numbers, smiley faces, or something else so everyone (internal and external) understands the measurements."

•"8 reasons why customer satisfaction is important"

•"We know you understand the importance of customer satisfaction. But in case you're on the fence about whether it's the most important customer service metric, let's look at some of the benefits of positive customer satisfaction."

•"1. Reduces customer churn"

•"In today's capitalistic world, there are always new and existing competitors to be aware of. This is important because your customers will always have somewhere else to buy similar products or services. According to these customer retention statistics, 66% of B2B customers stopped buying after a bad customer service experience and 52% of B2C customers did the same."

•"Ensuring your customer service team is going above and beyond the competition to keep CSAT scores up is crucial to reducing customer churn."

•"Retaining customers is a vital piece of the customer service puzzle. By doing everything in their power to help customers, your team will produce numbers that help the company stay competitive while also boosting customer loyalty and repeat business."

•"2. Boosts customer loyalty and recurring revenue"

•"Existing customers spend an average of 31% more and are 50% more likely to try new products compared to new customers. Higher customer loyalty is also an indicator of customer satisfaction levels. Happy customers will continue to make repeat purchases (or keep their subscriptions), ultimately boosting your bottom line."

•"Consider this example:"

•"Your business sells software with a monthly subscription. Each subscription costs $10/month and there are currently 100 customers. Through your surveys, you learn that 90% of them are happy this month so you're at risk of losing 10 customers and $100 next month. Now multiply that by 12 months and you've lost $1200 over a year."

•"Next month you find that only 70% of customers are satisfied. You're now at risk of losing 30% of your revenue or $300 next month and $3600 over a year. The lower your customer satisfaction rate, the more your bottom line suffers - especially when you're at a higher pricing tier."

•"Customer satisfaction is one of the top ways you can measure potential repeat purchases and loss risks. When customers are satisfied with your products or services, they stick around and spend more."

•"Increasing customer loyalty and retention by only 5% can result in growing profits from 25-95%, and it can help cut down on customer acquisition costs (CAC). In fact, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than keeping an existing customer."

•"3. Improves efficiency and productivity"

•"Evaluating your CSAT and other customer service KPIs will help you determine where your agents can improve to make customers happier. Satisfied customers mean you'll spend less time fixing problems and more time getting work done."

•"For example, if your agent's resolve rate has decreased, you may discover they need more training to resolve tickets faster."

•"The information you learn from these numbers can help you make processes more efficient, thus improving agents' productivity. It can be as easy as asking your agents what they find most difficult, tedious, or what causes bottlenecks in the process to guide you to fixes that ultimately improve your CSAT scores and overall revenue."

•"4. Increases employee satisfaction"

•"When your team is happy, they're much more likely to provide great customer service than when they're frustrated. Learning and implementing what your agents need to be more productive makes the entire process smoother for everyone involved."

•"Removing any barriers to your agents' tasks creates a better flow of work and a more clear way for you as a leader to identify what's working and what's not. This ultimately leads to a better CSAT score when your agents can resolve issues quickly."

•"It also boosts morale in your team. Especially when 55% of customer service agents in a recent survey say that a supportive work environment is the most important thing they need to do their job well."

•"Another morale-booster is rewarding your employees for improving CSAT scores. By creating an environment where they are accomplishing set goals, agents will feel happy and engaged. This will help improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention."

•"5. Encourages brand advocacy"

•"Customer satisfaction and loyalty are important for brand advocacy. Whether you want them to or not, customers talk about their experiences with your company. But unhappy customers tell 15 people on average about their bad experience. Extrapolate that by your number of customers and that's a lot of bad press."

•"Conversely, Salesforce found that 72% of satisfied customers share their positive experiences with others and 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know. Improving your CSAT scores means your happy customers will talk about their good experiences with their friends and family, ultimately leading to more business for your company."

•"6. Helps you stand out from the competition"

•"In some cases, it can be extremely difficult for customers who are trying to get help to find the right person or to get a hold of a human at all. This frustration for customers creates a very poor experience and a decrease in customer satisfaction and loyalty. That's why positive CSAT scores are important to stay competitive."

•"Being more accessible to your customers is an excellent way to create benefits for your customers as well as your company. While other companies are difficult to reach, you can be the standout by offering an omnichannel customer service experience. For example, having a live chat option, being responsive on social media, and/or a human simply to answer the phones."

•"Create a culture around having great customer service and satisfaction by training agents to ask customers if they need anything else. You could also create automated customer service email templates to improve your CSAT. For example, you could send an automated email confirmation to customers who open a help ticket letting them know how soon they can expect to hear back. The little things add up to a great overall customer experience and positive customer satisfaction."

•"7. Provides upselling and cross-selling opportunities"

•"Think back to the last time you made a purchase and it was exactly what you needed. Were satisfied with the customer service experience. Did you return to that company for another item? It's likely you did because that's what 60-70% of happy customers do."

•"Positive customer satisfaction leads people to return to your company for another purchase. This provides salespeople with more opportunities to cross-sell complementary products or upgraded services to increase sales revenue. The customer will be more likely to buy because they're already happy with the product and customer service."

•"8. Benefits other departments"

•"Your agents are the front line for your current customers. They are the people who speak to customers - happy or not to identify their needs. You have the ability to take the feedback you receive from these customers and share it with other departments."

•"For example, if you work together with the marketing department, you can help them better understand the pain points of the customers to inform marketing campaigns. This way they can create marketing messaging that explains how your product or service solves potential or existing customers' problems. You can also tell the sales team what people tend to complain about after they've purchased so they can preemptively reduce buyer's remorse."

•"Using tools can help a great deal with cross-team communications and could raise overall productivity by 25%. Better communication allows everyone to understand expectations, receive information quickly, and react to the insights faster."

•"Having a cohesive cross-department communication flow will allow for a holistic picture of the customer experience. Then you can see where the process needs improvement to create a better end result and more satisfied customers."

•"Customer satisfaction is key to your success"

•"Creating an environment where your customers and agents are happy 100% of the time is impossible. But now that you understand the importance of customer satisfaction, you can tackle setting and achieving goals for this essential customer service metric, while also making sure your customers and agents feel appreciated and understood."

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"Kaizo helps customer service teams boost their efficiency, productivity, and quality to provide a better overall customer experience. Customer Support Team Leads can use the tool to measure and, eventually, manage customer satisfaction rates and prevent customer churn. Book a demo to see how you can increase your CSAT today!" @kaizo.com

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[Suzanne O]

You'd have to be stupid to think it's not.

 

[Ricsca]

Will I ever read all of this text

 

[Vercingetorix]

Well I haven't yet had enough time to present everything I intended and it already appears this subject is considered a low priority by whomever "moderates" here.

Not very encouraging at all.

 

[MySiteGuy]

I think you may want to master the art of "less is more" if you want people to actually read and engage with the points you're trying to make. Also, quote snippets from articles, instead of wholesale copy/paste which is essentially copyright infringement.

 

[Paul B]

Well I haven't yet had enough time to present everything I intended and it already appears this subject is considered a low priority by whomever "moderates" here.

...

Not very encouraging at all.

The thread seems to be about customer service in general, not specifically related to XF.

Hence why it was moved from where it was originally posted, which is for "non-support-related discussion and feedback for XenForo".

 

[Slavik]

Hence why it was moved from where it was originally posted, which is for "non-support-related discussion and feedback for XenForo".

Excellent customer service right there.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Customer service is the icing on a cake. There are plenty of companies who have appalling customer service records but still prosper because they supply a product or service of a standard that most people are happy with so they can afford to ignore customer complaints e.g. Sony UK, Ray-Ban, Adidas UK, Hulu, Reebok, Ikea, Levi's, Apple etc.

Taking Sony as an example I've personally had a life-time of experience with multiple Sony products and never had a single issue and yet 82% of people who submitted a review to Trustpilot say otherwise.

Sony UK is rated "Bad" with 1.4 / 5 on Trustpilot

Do you agree with Sony UK's TrustScore? Voice your opinion today and hear what 1,347 customers have already said.

uk.trustpilot.com

I'd argue that while customer service is important, it's trounced by the quality of the product or service being supplied.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Alrighty, so already we have had several examples generously provided by some of the well known resident xenforo.community/forum discussion derailers—unwittingly helping highlight an obvious area where XF is-(*imo)-failing basic Customer Service responsibilities.

Spoiler: 3 Examples

These are 3 clear examples of variably concealed presentations of Passive Aggressive behaviours, ie: disingenuously feigning "subject pertinence"/"authoritariveness" for veiling the indirect personal attacks indended to elicit negative emotional reactivity.

Also known as: Abusive Behaviour, Manipulation, etc....

Spoiler: Passive Aggression=Abuse

And yet however, as an OP relevant example of Customer Service dereliction-again: the "moderation" appears to allow, ignore and is therefore participant to enablement perpetuity of such Abusive Behaviours-while also demonstrating Passive Aggression disguised as "justified"-"moderation"—according to arbitrary application of "the rules".

*Is it acceptable according to XF to publicly & deliberately attack others via statements insulting others intellectual capacities, ie: saying an other is "stupid"- with obvious negativity implied?

*How about the same behaviour as has been presented indirectly by Aussie?

Spoiler: "The Rules"

"1. The XenForo forums are the forums for a business and should be viewable in business contexts or by children. Please do not post anything which is inappropriate in a business setting. This includes, but is not limited to, profanity, sexual, sexualized or illicit content, hateful, threatening, provocative or vulgar content, links and websites and discussion encouraging the use of piracy or warez distributions, or any otherwise illegal content. Please do not attempt to circumvent the censoring options we have set up."

"2. Be courteous and respect your fellow members. To be clear, personal attacks, aggressive messages, and passive-aggressive behavior is unacceptable. If you take particular issue with another user and are unable to reply in a civilised and constructive way to their posts, you should ignore the user."

"3. Posts should always be constructive and on topic. For common issues, simply telling someone to search is not acceptable. If you disagree with a post and feel the need to reply as such, it's important that you explain why. Off topic posts may be moved or deleted as required."

"4. Similarly, messages involving XenForo's competitors must be constructive. Posts regarding their business practices, staff, and software are generally unacceptable. However, constructive criticism towards XenForo in relation to others' features is acceptable (for example, saying that XenForo should function like X in software Y)."

"5. If you feel another user is attacking or being aggressive towards you, report their message to staff. Do not respond publicly. This simply continues the back and forth that derails topics and makes them uncomfortable for other users. If someone attacks you and you respond with an attack, you will be warned regardless of who started it."

"13. If you have a problem with or question about a moderator's decision, contact the moderator privately or submit a message through the contact system. Posts or topics discussing moderator actions will be removed."

(*Hold ya mod-happy horses: #5 is irrelevant here as I do not feel as such is described, yet I still easily recognize the dysfunctional behaviour exampled and simply intend constructively utilizing it to benefit all XF Community members.)

Spoiler: "Moderation"

*Refer to both the OP & as alluded again in my third post: this is a subject requiring comprehensive additional provisions.
*ie: numerous posts are requisite for presenting the fullest scope of relevance via indepth information + simplistic examples which are necessary for adequately elucidating core social/psychological aspects of 'Customer Service' specifically for those who are more experienced & knowledgeable with computer programming and the navigation thereof increasingly "normalized" & proliferated social toxicity—and yet whom simply aren't highly experienced or knowledgeable in real psychological actualities.

The thread seems to be about customer service in general, not specifically related to XF.

Hence why it was moved from where it was originally posted, which is for "non-support-related discussion and feedback for XenForo".

That shameless assumption is in obvious error and proven so as stated in the OP:

*The fundamental purpose of this thread subject is specifically that of non-support-related discussion and feedback for XenForo-and furthermore by so doing serves beneficial for absolutely everyone that has anything to do with XenForo.

*Efficacious Customer Service requires proactive communication between "the Business" and "the Customer". Not arrogant disregard & invalidation based on subjective pseudo-arbitration by rampant moderators.

*As a legitimate XenForo Client, I often feel—and more importantly regularly recognize—that the repeated negligent behaviours demonstrated by XF Staff members allowance for certain regular members who are obvious perpetrators thereof Abusive Behaviours—towards myself & many others—as being offensive and shamefully incongruous or simply put: Blatant Hypocrisy.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Excellent customer service right there.

[*I'm not allowed use of post reactions, so here's my substitute for your comment]

 

[Vercingetorix]

Customer service is the icing on a cake. There are plenty of companies who have appalling customer service records but still prosper because they supply a product or service of a standard that most people are happy with so they can afford to ignore customer complaints e.g. Sony UK, Ray-Ban, Adidas UK, Hulu, Reebok, Ikea, Levi's, Apple etc.

Taking Sony as an example I've personally had a life-time of experience with multiple Sony products and never had a single issue and yet 82% of people who submitted a review to Trustpilot say otherwise.

Sony UK is rated "Bad" with 1.4 / 5 on Trustpilot

Do you agree with Sony UK's TrustScore? Voice your opinion today and hear what 1,347 customers have already said.

uk.trustpilot.com

I'd argue that while customer service is important, it's trounced by the quality of the product or service being supplied.

Yeah I actually do agree with your points, although I think the quality of product or service are inescapably and significantly influenced by customer service—ie: customer service is an essential aspect of the product/service.

Sony UK, Ray-Ban, Adidas UK, Hulu, Reebok, Ikea, Levi's, Apple etc may be leading the competition now despite poor CS records—yet competitors are always nipping at their heels and when another inevitably produces an equal or superior product/service—all those long disregarded former & current customers are unlikely to refrain from jumping ship asap.

Note: There's information in the OP linked article/& in post #2 regarding crucial financial aspects directly related to customer services.
A simple example being that each satisfied customer typically functions much like an independent advertising node which is self motivated for promotion of the product/service.
Whereas alternatively, dissatisfied customers would generally demote the product/service.

 

[MySiteGuy]

Alrighty, so already we have had several examples generously provided by some of the well known resident xenforo.community/forum discussion derailers—unwittingly helping highlight an obvious area where XF is-(*imo)-failing basic Customer Service responsibilities.


These are 3 clear examples of variably concealed presentations of Passive Aggressive behaviours, ie: disingenuously feigning "subject pertinence"/"authoritariveness" for veiling the indirect personal attacks indended to elicit negative emotional reactivity.

The entire premise of your topic was passive-aggressiveness towards Xenforo, along with a heaping helping of thin skin.

 

[Vercingetorix]

....hmmmm,...yeah nah good thinking @MySiteGuy thank you for sharing this perspective. Perhaps the intensity of my assertive eccentricity may possibly be perceived as something else, tbh I'm not quite sure.

So anyways, with this in mind I've now reassessed the full thread and do appreciate your highlighting that my topic could have been perceived as "passive-aggressive",...& upon further reflection I can see how it might have come across that way.

However, I am firm with my intention for raising valid Customer Service concerns and for engaging constructive discussion on something I genuinely consider important for the online composite community of communities so that we may openly explore opportunities for solutions &/or improvements..

If you have specific examples or suggestions for reframing the topic, I am all ears. Cheers.

 

[mjda]

If the goal is to have a discussion without offending anyone, I'd consider reframing it like this:





--The end

 

[Jja]

Yes, i will not read this

 

[JamesBrown]

If you have specific examples or suggestions for reframing the topic, I am all ears. Cheers.

How about a nice antique frame?

 

[Vercingetorix]

How about a nice antique frame?

View attachment 290799

Thanks. It is a beautiful sketch.

Anyways, I found some stats earlier but am uncertain of the veracity.

Spoiler: Surely...

...JamesBrown knows...

Spoiler

Regardless whether accurate or not, these serve adequate enough for lazily highlighting a couple of aspects relevant to Customer Services.

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"According to customer service facts from the 2020 Achieving Customer Amazement study, a whopping 96.2% of consumers said they would gladly switch companies or brands for the sake of better customer service."—(Hyken)

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"We've all been there, right? That time when you got the urge to buy more just because the service was great. Well, it appears everyone is willing to spend more money as a reward for getting outstanding customer service. Customer service research further reveals that 94% of customers will recommend a brand that offers a very good customer experience to a friend."—(American Express, Qualtrics XM)

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[FTL]

I'd argue that while customer service is important, it's trounced by the quality of the product or service being supplied.

Interesting take on this. I think they kinda dovetail together really, with both being really important and each one being more important in different scenarios. A classic devil's in the details situation.

 

[Suzanne O]

It all depends upon what it is you want help with.
Sometimes the guys will have an answer for you most times they don't.
For example there was a bug in the fravola editor upgrade.
I had asked for some help and got my answer after the second time.
Some of these people don't like being sworn at too if you need their help with something.