I can’t express how important customer service is. Here are two personal and recent experiences on customer service and how they made me feel about the company:

We recently went to a very popular restaurant in Las Vegas for lunch. We eat at this restaurant all the time and we were not suprised to be seated quickly as they are not usually busy during the day. We sat at our table for fifteen minutes without one person stopping by to get drinks or ask how we were doing. There were plenty of servers around and plenty of people were getting their food and drinks. Being very hungry and tired of being ignored I went up to the hostess and told her that I had been at the table for a significant amount of time without acknowledgment. She said she would take care of that right away. I went back to the table and within a minute had a server at our table. She said she was sorry and that she isn’t the normal server but would comp our drinks and have a manager come to our table. The manager did come to the table and apologized. We told him it was alright our current server was taking care of us. When the bill came we were very suprised to see that the restaurant comped our entire meal. This was a complete suprise to us because we didn’t complain. We just wanted to be acknowledged. We have since gone back quite a few times and had outstanding service.

I needed a laptop charger a few weeks ago and found the same model that I had before online at a great price. I quickly ordered it. I received the normal confirmation email for my order but did not receive an email saying my order had been shipped. So I waited for the package to arrive. After a week I decided to send an email to the company and ask if the package had been shipped and if there was a tracking number. I never received a response. Two days later the package did indeed arrive. I would not use the company again simply for their lack of response to my email.

A whopping 97% of unhappy customers will not tell you they are unhappy. They will simply take their business elsewhere. For the three percent that do tell you they are unhappy do your best to fix the problem and they will probably continue to do business with you. Treat your customers like gold, all of them not just those that complain, and they will notice the difference. You will notice the difference too because your business will grow from referrals.