How Bad Customer Service Affects Your Business?

It is well known that customer service is an integral part of every business and success of an organization depends upon, how they serve customer. An organization may have great products or services, but if they are not serving their customers well, then as an organization you have lost the battle of winning customers.

What is Bad Customer Service?

When customers have an unpleasant experience with any brand at any point of the journey, this is bad customer service. For an organization these points are moment of truth and they need to win over them. If things go wrong here, then that leaves the customer in bad taste.

Impact of Bad Customer Service

Today customers are really advanced and they have high expectations from organization if compared to customers in previous decade. If we talk about automotive industry, here also customers are getting digitized and purchasing parts online. If an OEM will not prioritize such customers, he should be ready to face the consequences of this.

Brand Reputation

If an OEM is not serious about improving the customer service experience, then they are entering in a whole new zone of bad brand reputation. OEMs need to remember, customer will always talk about their experience with other, When they are bad.

In the era of social media, dissemination of information has become easy. A single Facebook post or single tweet is enough to ruin the brand value.

Lesser Conversions

To be honest, customers hate it when they call the dealership and told to hold the line as organization executives are busy. As a customer, the first thought that comes to the mind is to cut the call and never return again to the brand. All such bad experiences are due to less conversation channel and if any brand is offering such experiences to customer on frequent basis, there will be lesser conversations.

Business Loss & Customer Abrasion

According to various studies conducted at different levels, it has been concluded that it is costlier to acquire new customers than to retain existing customers. And, a brand can never grow without proper customer services. It is an important factor that leads to brand loyalty. If an OEM is continuously offering bad customer services, it will make customers unsure of the brand and they will start looking for better alternatives.

Decreased Employee Morale

Bad customer service not only has the external consequences but it can also lead to internal employees of the organization feel burdened while handling angry customers. An internal feeling of free riding may generate among the customers, i.e. best executives picking the call of not so good customers. if such conditions are arising continuously in an organization, customer moral can go down along with the service level. Moreover, if an organization forces employees to follow the same structure for long, there can be sense of helplessness among employees.

Ways to Improve Customer Service

Today end-customers have plenty of options, as the competition is very high. Be it product or service, there will be always someone waiting to grab the opportunity. The only way an OEM has to attract and retain customers is by, being customer-centric and having an edge over the competitors. Also, there are many other ways through which OEMs can provide best customer services. Have a look:

A) Don't Make Customers Wait: Having automated software on board can help OEMs in managing customers effectively. An automated platform combined with communication facility can be game changer. Through such platform, customer can directly report their issues or send their queries. Such a platform is, online catalogue from Intellinet, where end-customers can also look for required products online and if they are not able to find it, they can report it to dealer so that authorized dealer can process the request to the OEM.

B) Value Customer Feedback: Collecting and analyzing the data gathered from customers can give valuable insights to OEMs about customer thought process and about their demands and expectations. As discussed above, online parts catalogue is the perfect portal for such tasks.

Also, this feedback from customers must be used constructively rather than being defensive. Doing so will not only aggravate the situation, but it will further hamper the brand reputation.

C) Omni-channel Support: OEMs do not limit themselves to manual communication channel only and should be connected to audience on the channels that they prefer. For urgent matters, OEMs and dealers should have a digital channel where they can share, emails, PDFs and other documents like - image, videos, etc. Also, we are living in digital age, so"instant messaging" is also a good option for OEMs to connect over chat.

D) Empower Employees: For an organization, employees are the best brand ambassadors - leverage them to the best of the abilities to create a pleasurable experience for customers.

Training employees and giving them the right tools and technology is another way to improve customer services. For example, using knowledge base management system software, employees can get a 360-degree view of the customer - regardless of the channel via which the customer has contacted. Such tools can help them to solve queries faster and leave a positive impression on customers mind.

Conclusion: Lastly, celebrate the wins with automation. Upgrade yourself and the organization to serve customers better and standalone from the crowd. Moreover, if you have any other query, feel free to comment below.