Customer Service Insight-The 10% Who Hate Me.
Every company, organization or governmental agency has a population of customers who are dissatisfied to the point of open dislike. Even to the point of hate. The secret to managing that population may rest in not managing them at all.
First, the rationale of the ten percent rule. When measured, customer service will generally form a pretty standardized distribution where between two and twenty percent of a customer base love the service provider and the products they provide. The range is dependent on the level of service provided and the most normal distribution of these enamored customers is ten percent.
There is also a population of customers that are ambivalent about you and your service. When asked, they will say things like “okay”, “fine” and “alright.” You have not wowed them to be in love with you and they cannot pinpoint anything grossly wrong with the service level either. This is most often the plurality of your customer base and represents between eighty and ninety eight percent of your customers. This population is the highest risk and highest opportunity population of your customer base.
They are at risk because they are one negative event from becoming a dissatisfied customer and they are the customer population that is most likely to shop somewhere else looking to be wowed. The opportunity in this giant pool of customers come from the chance that you have to be the service provider to wow them and win them into the group of customers that love you.
By contrast, there are also between two and twenty percent of customers that are quite dissatisfied with the service provider. Again this will vary in proportion to the level of service provided but the normal is about ten percent. This population will openly look for an opportunity to leave you, tell others about their woe with you and express their dissatisfaction frequently and assertively. When queried, this group of customers will also have more than one dissatisfaction point and rarely will their unhappiness center around a single event.
Another dynamic of the dissatisfied ten percent is the amount of resources that these people consume in an organization. The time, manpower, money, forgiveness of fees, waiver or reduction of costs and general angst that these customers use is incredible. For a moment, consider the amount of time spent with a great customer contrasted with a very bad customer. Put a number to the investment required to attempt to save a dissatisfied customer with the investment required to keep a very happy customer.
Behind the investment and the time involved, the cold and hard realization is that even with great letters of apology, waiving all fees and sending a fruit basket, the chances of retaining that customer are poor. Add the fact that the customer has already told their tale of woe several times and you can easily see that the great investment is trying to satisfy a difficult customer may be in vain.
All of this leads back to the tactical approach that sometimes doing very little may be the best strategy. A heartfelt apology; absolutely. An apology letter; sure. Giving away or waiving legitimately earned fees; now be careful. Disciplining an employee who did nothing wrong; whoa there. That money and extra resource that you are giving away may not have any long term service value benefit.
