"What’s good for the customer is what’s good for the business – it’s as simple as that". This quote by Kent Nordin the Managing Director of Ikea Australia and New Zealand emphasises the growing perception that customer service is the new marketing.

With the advent of social media, people can either be transformed into a surrogate sales force or they can spell disaster for a company. Customer service is set to fuse with marketing and companies need to rethink their old ways of doing things.

Good customer service is the bare minimum as companies will have to participate in a cycle of listening to and sourcing feedback from their customers to maintain a competitive edge.

Companies are realising the value of loyal customers. It is more profitable for a business to retain and grow an existing customer than it is to find new ones. Empirical studies have demonstrated that as little as a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profitability by 25 to 95 per cent (Source: Bain & Co).

The 2007 RightNow Technologies Customer Experience Impact Report has indicated that customers are far more likely to shift loyalties after a bad experience. The results show that 80% of customers will not return to a business after a negative experience. This is up from 68% in 2006. Also, 74% of customers will register a complaint or tell others after a bad experience. This is up from 67%.

"The good news is that by listening to customers in the field, companies have the opportunity to discover what customers really want and feed that into their marketing department to create more relevant, real world initiatives across product development, sales, promotions, PR and advertising", said Carolyn Queale, Business Development Manager of SpySee Mystery

Shopping and Reviews.

She added, "Marketing-savvy businesses are moving away from being reactive in their customer service. They are using strategies such as mystery shopping to set a benchmark for their organisation and then using training to create a proactive and responsive approach to customer service, designed to enhance their competitive position in the market place".

Organisations can successfully differentiate their service delivery in three ways:

• By employing and training capable customer service staff
• By developing a superior environment in which the service delivery is offered
• By designing a superior delivery process

For more information about including a customer service audit in your marketing budget for the next financial year, please contact SpySee.