In the US most firms believe they are really awesome at customer service but, no matter how good you are, problems occur.  Mistakes happen. I find most firms do not realize the danger of losing customers from mistakes and my recent experience reinforces that claim.

Providing outstanding customer service at the right price is the “Golden Rule” of most companies. It’s worth remembering that we all experience customer service every day. Customer service is a critical piece of your business, and you should fine-tune it as much as you can. Here are some well-known facts on customer service ….

Fact: 90% of companies say they deliver superior customer service and only 8% of people think these same companies deliver superior customer service. Which goes to show, you shouldn’t be guessing when it comes to evaluating your customer service.

Think you don’t have to worry?  Guess again!

Every organization makes mistakes daily. Things go wrong and bad stuff happens no matter how committed we are to great service.

When this happens, the frontline employee often takes the brunt of your customer’s wrath. Not every customer is nice and often uses derogatory language. When things blow up the customer can get very excited and their tone of voice changes dramatically, setting the stage for an unpleasant encounter.

$4 Billion Acquisition, Lousy Service and Burning Millions on Advertising

I developed Feelings, the first customer service program ever developed and released it in January 1980. This was before many of my current readers were born. My reasoning was I witnessing firms (in 1979) spending fortunes on marketing and advertising and then, as the customer walked in the front door, the employees would literally smack the customer on the head with a baseball bat with their terrible customer service.

So, pretty hard to believe that 38 years later and with everyone claiming they have the world’s best customer service…the exact same thing is happening today.

I believe in the US too many employees believe lying is good customer service. Their focus is to make customers feel happy instead of telling them the truth. It appears to happen more in the US than other countries.