A childhood friend, who has just finished reading my new book, teased me by asking, “Don't you ever feel guilty about making a living from telling people common sense things they already know?” It’s a reaction I get a lot. “But it’s just common sense,” people tell me.
I always reply, “No. It’s not common sense. It makes sense but it’s not common sense. If it was, we wouldn’t live in a world where customers are outraged. We wouldn’t live in a world where every year consumer trust in the companies they deal with declines to an all time low. We wouldn’t find that in 2011 people say they expect better service than they got in 2010 but believe they are getting less.
Looking after your customers so they come back and buy more certainly makes sense. There is a growing body of evidence to show that providing good service is great for your business. One of my clients, a retailer in Australia, has found there is a strong relationship between how customers rate the service in a store and the financial performance of that store. An American study found that companies that put their customers first gained 4% more new customers, retained 4% more existing customers and increased sales to existing customers by 8%. A global study by American Express found that customers in Canada, the USA and Australia who got good service spent up to 13% more. A study by the London School of Economics found that companies that had a lot of people saying good things about them and very few saying bad things grew four times more than other companies.
Do business leaders understand that great service is good business? You probably only need call your local telephone company to find out what makes sense is not common sense.
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