As a small company, you know how important your customers are to the success of your business. There is a lot of information on how to provide "good customer service", but very few businesses actually succeed at it. Some industry analysts are even saying that poor customer service is the main reason businesses lose half of their customers within five years, half their employees within four years, and half their investors within one year.

So What Can You Do?

The hardest part about providing good customer service is handling customer complaints. Anyone who's ever had to deal with an irate customer knows it can be just as difficult whether it's over the phone or in person. Yet there are some very good reasons to listen carefully to those customers and take care of their complaints immediately:

• Unhappy Customers Don't Come Back

  Businesses with poor customer service lose 2% market share per year. In addition to that, most businesses only hear from 4% of their dissatisfied customers. So, businesses don't hear from 96% of customers who are unhappy. For every one that you hear from, there are another 24 that you don't, and 90% of those 24 customers just won't come back. Worse yet, each of these customers will tell an average of 10 of their friends. Can you afford the bad publicity?

• Happy Customers Bring In New Customers

  In the same way that bad customer service loses customers, good customer service brings in more - about 6% more per year. It's not that businesses with good customer service never make mistakes - it's that they're known for bending over backwards to correct the mistakes that they do make.

• Happy Customers Are Repeat Customers

  Statistics say 95% of complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve their complaint on the spot. The resulting loyalty can be tracked in dollars and cents. So, if you occasionally don't meet customer expectations, you can still be perceived as reputable if you have stood behind your guarantees, and handled criticism well.

• Customer Complaints Are A Good Source Of New Ideas

  Lastly, if you listen closely to those customer complaints, you may come up with new ideas on how to provide even better service. For example, you may get some great ideas from listening to the customer hotline. It's from the complaints, that you hear where change is needed.

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