For the past 125 years, 99 and 44/100ths percent was pretty good when it came to product quality. What everyone loved, in addition to quality, was the way Ivory Soap floated.
Today, 100% or better is the minimum standard for service or product quality. Over the top and better than your last experience is what you must have just to get in the game and stay in business. Before you drop your price to make your service or product more attractive to customers, work on your service.
In a poll by Accenture, who commissioned International Communications Research to survey customers about their experiences in 10 service-related industries, including banking, Internet services, hotels, airlines, life insurance and retail, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believed customer service had not improved much in the past five years, even though businesses have been adopting technologies to help them improve customer service.
Poor service or product quality topped the list of reasons why customers (61%) switch service providers. Thirty nine percent said another reason for the switch was the representative of the business did not know enough about the service or product. Other things that got in the way of the customer experience included company policies that create lots of extra steps and technologies that delay or stop service.
So you can drop your prices to the level of your stupidest competitor and it's not going to get you very far.
Here's something else you might want to check against your own business practices and memory of what customers tell you. In that same research by Accenture, the most frustrating aspect of interacting with a business was needing to repeat the same information to different people, all in the same company. Seventy-five percent of the respondents said that frustrated them and we know that feeling becomes a vote with their feet, plus, they tell their friends all about this after they've left you.
This is the essence of CRM. It's about one to one marketing and that means everyone in one company remembers and shares everything about one customer so they never have to repeat information. CRM is about treating different people differently. The golden rule has been about treating others like you want to be treated. That's not good enough any more, either. Now it's the platinum rule that says treat every customer the way they told you they wanted to be treated. This is not about you any more. It's all about them.
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