What is Keeping You Up at Night?

October 20, 2014

You hope your customers are happy but you have niggling doubts that you just can’t shake. Your sales team says everything is fine, and the forecast looks good. What is there to worry about?

Still, you know that 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain. And, even worse, 91% of those will simply leave and never come back. (1) Are you in danger of missing the cues that will tell you there’s a problem?

It’s more straightforward to react to a customer complaint. And when a customer gives you feedback or lets you know what the competition is up to, you can take specific mitigating steps. These are signals that draw your attention – but you don’t always get a clear warning. You have to keep scanning.

When you take steps to more deeply understand your customer relationships and how they feel about your performance, you can proactively address their changing needs. You can stay ahead of the curve and demonstrate that you are working on improvements. By proactively seeking this information, you are acting from a position of strength, building on successes.

The alternative is to always be reacting, which is a weak, defensive position.

“A customer is 4 times more likely to defect to the competition if they are having a problem that is service related, rather than price or product related.” (2)

Starbucks is an example of a company that changed based on customer feedback in 2008. Declining results showed that customers were not happy. Starbucks Chairman and CEO, Harold Schultz, shut down 7,100 U.S. locations to conduct training to improve the customer experience. 135,000 employees were trained to prepare drinks properly – the art of espresso. (3)

Research has shown that trust is the number one predictor of customer satisfaction. (4) It is the most critical ingredient to any competitive advantage, but it can erode quickly if we are not vigilant.

Listening to your clients using The Client Trust Index™ system is one way you can be proactive and get a good sleep at night...

Sources:

• F1 Financial Training Services
• Bain and Company
• NBC News, ‘Starbucks to Close all U.S. Stores for Training’
• Bruning & Ledingham, 2000