Several years ago, the American Society for Quality Control conducted a survey to quantify the reasons companies lose customers. The survey showed that 68% of lost customers left because they were “rejected due to an attitude of indifference on the part of a company employee.” The second reason for customer desertion was “dissatisfaction with the product or service” which was mentioned by only 14%.

#1 Reason for Customer Defection – Indifference Attitude – 68%

Reason #2 for customer churn: Dissatisfaction with product or service: 14%

Realizing that almost five times as many customers leave because of bad human relations than because of problems with the product/service. Perhaps it’s time for an assessment and attitude adjustment instead?

In the last month I have had the following experiences:

• The person who answered the phone said “oh he’s on another call I’ll ask him to call you back” and never called!

• I filled out an inquiry form on a website with a request for a quote, and never got a response!

• I had an appointment with a company representative who never showed up and never tried to contact me.

Note: We are not talking about the quality of the product or the service, just the way these companies show interest in serving their customers.

Companies that work to provide excellent customer service by instituting policies and training staff to ensure that customer satisfaction grows at a faster rate than those that continually “remove” their customer base. They have to spend more to attract new customers just to keep up.

Great customer service doesn’t “just happen.” It comes from the core of the business. It starts with a mission statement and works its way through motivation, empowerment, inspiration, attitude, quantification, and review. It is a planned and orchestrated process just as manufacturing is a planned process with many components and operations. In other words, great customer service is about much more than just being nice to people or following the “golden rule.”

It’s a planned three-step process to continuously and consistently treat customers well (or at least… “not bad”).

1. Start with a simple statement that describes how you want your customers to be treated.

2. Compare that ideal level with the current level

3. Institute improvement policies where necessary. Create a regular schedule of measurement and reinforcement/retraining.

What can you do to institute a program that finds out if your staff are being indifferent? The sooner you start, the fewer customers you will lose.