10 Reasons to Prioritize Customer Service

10 Reasons to Prioritize Customer Service

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If you want to build a successful e-commerce business, you’ll have to give customer service time and attention.

After all, those working in customer service have daily interactions with clients. They are the first point of contact with customers, representing your company, resolving issues, and cultivating constructive relationships. 

When customer service is prioritized, businesses reap numerous benefits, including an increase in revenue, the number of loyal customers they have, and the number of positive reviews they receive. That’s why it’s crucial to put an emphasis on satisfying customers. 

Traditional customer service is frequently regarded as a cost center because providing support to customers can consume a significant amount of a company’s time and resources. The leaders of the company are aware that they need to provide service, but they view this obligation more as a “cost of doing business” than as an opportunity to pleasantly surprise customers, build meaningful connections, and ultimately boost revenue.

Customer service is more than just an overhead expense associated with running a company. It is a significant component of the experience that a customer has overall. In fact, it can make or break your online store. 

Need more proof? Today, we’re sharing 10 reasons why customer service is so important. 

Why Is Customer Service Important?

It is important to invest in customer service because doing so can help you build better relationships with your customers, which in turn leads to happier customers who are more likely to remain loyal and spread the word about your business.

An outstanding level of customer service can do wonders for your reputation, setting you apart from other businesses in your industry and putting you in a class all by yourself. 

Today’s customers not only want great service, but they’ve come to expect it. Don’t let them down!

Here’s why customer service is so important:

1. Great customer service is good for the bottom-line

Providing excellent customer service is about much more than simply making the customers happy. It’s also great for the bottom line of your ecommerce business. In fact, 84% of businesses that work to improve customer service report more money coming in. Key word here is “working.” Efforts are always being made to improve customer service.

Improving customer retention by 5% can result in a profit increase of 25%. If you can keep customers longer by 5%, you can make 25% more money. Great customer service encourages customers to stick around, which means they’ll spend more money with you over time. That is good news for your bottom line.

When they have a good experience with a business, half of their customers buy more from that brand.

67% of customers would pay more money if they had a better experience with customer service.

2. Positive experiences encourage customers to share with others

Even though we have easy access to online reviews, people still trust recommendations from friends and family more than anything else. Nielsen says that in 60 different countries, 83% of people trust what their friends and family say.

And if you have good customer service, your customers will be more likely to tell their friends about you.

After all, a good interaction with customer service does a lot more than just solve a simple problem. It can actually make a customer more or less likely to recommend your business to others.

Yes, after a good experience, 69% are likely to tell other people they know about the company. 

3. Reviews increasingly matter to prospective customers

When people buy something today, they want to be sure, so they usually read reviews online. Customers are becoming more and more interested in these good reviews. In fact, 91% of people read reviews online, and 84% of those people trust reviews as much as they trust recommendations from people they know. 

But if you want people to say nice things about your brand, you have to focus on giving great customer service. The good things that people say about your support team will make it into your reviews. 

Worse is what happens when your customer service team doesn’t do a good job. If someone has a bad experience, they are likely to write about it online, and potential customers are likely to see it. 

4. Great customer service reduces customer churn, keeping customers around

Your main goal for your ecommerce business should be to keep customers from leaving. That is, you want your customers to buy from you more than once; you want them to buy from you again and again.

You can keep customers from leaving in a number of ways, but one of the best is to focus on giving great customer service. It turned out that 75% of people would go back to a business if the customer service was good. 

If your customer service is bad, it’s likely to make people leave your business. When they had a bad experience with customer service, 89% of customers said they switched to a competitor.

5. Company culture and employee happiness are correlated with good customer service

If you can believe it, the happiness of your employees has a pretty direct link to the happiness of your customers. Gallup research shows that when employees are highly engaged, customer ratings go up by 10%.

What comes first, happy employees or happy customers? But the answer is that they both come together. 

When you try to make everyone in your business as happy as possible, it will have an effect on the culture of your business as a whole. 

Putting more effort into customer service can be good for both the team and the people who use it. When team members can help the people they serve in a good way, everyone is happy. 

6. Great customer service positively impacts overall business reputation

Some companies are known for how well they treat their customers. For instance, Zappos has been known for a long time to have great customer service, which has helped them compete with companies like Amazon.

When you take care of your customers well, it will be good for your reputation as a whole. Customers will tell their friends and family about their experiences, and customers will write reviews online about how well they were treated. 

Having a good name is about more than just how you look. A solid reputation leads to more customers. In fact, 55% of customers choose a brand because it is known for having good customer service.

7. Great customer service is a competitive advantage

There have never been more chances to make money in ecommerce, but there has also never been more competition. When consumers have a sea of options, how are you going to stand out?

Of course, you need to have a solid and reputable product. But the customer service you offer can help you stand out from the competition. Way back in 1995, researchers began to see companies embracing customer service as a competitive strategy. If businesses could treat their customers better than their competitors, they would be able to profit from it.

When these things happen, customer service is more than just having nice people answer the phone. It means making rules that make the customer feel cared for during the whole process of buying.

8. Customer service can be another marketing channel

When ecommerce teams provide exceptional customer service, they’re doing more than solving a simple issue. They also make their customers happy and impressed by giving them things they really want.

When customers like what you do, they tell their friends about it on social media. Chewy.com, an online store that sells pet supplies, is one of the places where we see this most often. When the team at Chewy hears that a customer’s beloved pet has died, they often send gifts and cards to the customer. 

The goal of Chewy is to help their customers when they are struggling. But as a side effect, these customers tell the rest of the world about their experiences with Chewy. Taking good care of customers is a way for Chewy to market itself.

9. Today’s customers have high expectations

Customer service has changed because of the rise of the internet. Customers can get help in more ways than ever before, and they can get it at any time of day. There have never been more high hopes.

72% of customers say that businesses should know what they want and treat them as unique people. Also, 66% of customers said they would switch to a different company if they felt “like a number, not an individual.” 

Indeed, these are high expectations to meet. But if the customer service you’re offering is middling, at best, then you’re going to have trouble getting customers to fall in love with your brand and its offerings. 

10. Your customers are essential to your business’s long term health

Customer service is all about giving support to your customers. These customers keep your business going. Without them, you wouldn’t be a brand at all.

Customer service is important for the long-term health of your business in a market where there is a lot of competition. Just like walking every day can keep you from getting sick, taking care of your customers now will help your brand grow in the long run. 

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