Protect brands through customer service

Customer service without doubt has a big role in sales for any business.

But a new survey suggests poor customer service, far from an occasional nuisance, can cost a company up to 20% of its annual revenues. The survey, “Global Insights on Succeeding in the Customer Experience Era,” was commissioned by Oracle, the software giant. The report polled more than 1,300 senior-level executives from 18 countries in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

A majority of the respondents, 93%, consider improving the customer experience a top priority over the next two years. Yet fewer than 40% of the companies in the survey have implemented formal customer experience initiatives. And fewer than one-fourth of the executives, 20%, consider their customer services initiatives “advanced.”

The survey also found that 71% of executives strongly agree with the premise that customers have more power today than three years ago. Plus, more than half of the respondents recognize customers will switch brands after a bad experience, and, most telling, 89% of the executives themselves have made a switch like that.