Why Customer Service is Important
(Episode 1 of 2 with Dr. Kelly Henry)
Dr. Kelly Henry is a chiropractor who grew his clinics into one of the top producing chiropractic offices in the nation. Dr. Kelly is also the author of Define and Deliver Exceptional Customer Service. Today, we’re going to discuss how great customer service can help grow our businesses.
Key Takeaways
In today’s episode, we will cover the following key takeaways:
- If we increase our customer retention rate by 5%, it can lead to an increase in 25–95% of profit.
- The key component to customer retention is creating an excellent customer experience.
- Studies have shown that businesses often rate their customer service much higher than their customers.
- To create great customer service we should fix our internal company culture and be consistent.
The 5% Bump System
Dr. Kelly’s first business failed, but through coaching and learning he was able to achieve the seven figure mark with his current business. Since then, he has had clients double and triple their business over the years by using his systems and strategies. This system he uses is what he called the 5% bump system.
Harvard Business Review ran a study where they found that if you increase your customer retention rate by 5%, it can lead to an increase in 25–95% of profit. With Dr. Kelly’s strategy, he focuses on increasing customer retention and reducing customer churn, rather than focusing solely on attracting new customers. He wants to increase his customer retention rate by 5%.
“The key component to [customer retention] is creating an excellent customer experience and having better customer service,” Dr. Kelly said. “You do that by making your customers, your patients, your clients feel important, valuable, and special when they are interacting with your business each and every time.”
When we make our customers feel important and valuable, they will want to return to us again and again. Dr. Kelly’s best monetization secret is focusing on giving the best customer service possible. When we create a happy customer, we create a loyal customer. They don’t just buy again; they also refer their friends and family.
“Focus on the retention and on treating those customers in a valuable manner to create that loyalty,” Dr. Kelly said. “Create those relationships where the customer would rather die than leave your business. That leads to referrals and leads to growth. It leads to massive profits when done properly.”
Amazon is a great example of a business that focuses on making their customers feel valuable. If a customer isn’t satisfied with their product, Amazon makes it easy for them to return the product or get a replacement. Because of this hassle-free customer experience, many people are loyal to using Amazon again and again.
Chick-Fil-A is another great example of a company that has a culture of putting the customer first. They teach their employees how to treat their customers right and train them to say “my pleasure” after each customer interaction.
“I’m convinced that it’s not because of their food, . . . but it’s really that culture. It’s the feeling you get by doing business with them that really keeps those customers coming back for more,” Dr. Kelly said.
How to Fix Customer Service Problems
The key to customer retention is great customer service. However, many companies struggle in this regard, especially since the pandemic. Due to COVID-19, many businesses had to go completely online, or create an online aspect of their business if they didn’t already have it. Going online has created some challenges, especially in regard to providing great customer service.
One of the biggest problems companies struggle with regarding customer service is thinking they already have great customer service, even when they don’t. There are likely always holes we can go in and fix. Studies have shown that a majority of businesses rate their customer service much higher than their customers. We should evaluate our customer service by looking at our retention rates and sending out surveys to get a feel of how happy our customers are. This way we can find ways to continually improve.
Great customer service can improve our retention and retention improves our bottom line. I think a lot of times the reason why CEOs don’t focus more on customer service is they see it as a cost center instead of a revenue center, but if we focus on great customer service and we improve our retention, we can increase our profitability by 25 to 95%. If we focused on customer service that way, it would help us to see it as a revenue center instead of a cost center.
So, how can we begin to improve the customer experience?
1. Fix the Internal Culture
Dr. Kelly always starts by looking at the internal culture of a company. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do they treat their employees? How do they train their employees? He said, “Make sure that [company] culture is one of a team atmosphere of the employees feeling valuable so they in turn make the customers feel valuable.”
One of the biggest mistakes Dr. Kelly made was treating his staff as a liability instead of an asset. He had the mentality that the staff were only there to do the least amount of work possible and his job was to stay on top of everyone. But, all that did was create a situation where he wasn’t happy with them and they weren’t happy with him. He learned quickly not to run a business this way.
It’s hard to make customers happy when the staff isn’t. Our staff should be seen as a valuable asset to our business. “Happy employee equals a happy customer,” Dr. Kelly said. In addition to treating our employees right, we should also train them right. We want to make sure our employees know to prioritize the customer, even in difficult situations.
2. Be Consistent
We have to be consistent. If there is inconsistency, it will ruin the experience. Even if a customer has nine positive experiences with our company and only one negative experience, they will often remember the one negative experience over the other good ones.
“Our human nature is to look at the negative,” Dr. Kelly said. “When we have those two polar opposites going on in a business as far as customer service, that’s an absolute killer. . . . There’s going to be mess ups, there’s going to be problems on occasion, but we want to minimize those as much as possible and really stay committed to the process and to all the actions on an everyday basis.”
It is the simple actions done consistently that make all the difference. Once we start implementing things such as using customers’ names in interactions or offering discounts to make up for mistakes on our end, then we can go and refine certain areas. After that, we should create a checklist or set up monthly meetings to remind ourselves to do the right things.
Connect with Dr. Kelly
Thank you so much Dr. Kelly for sharing your stories and insights with us today. To learn more about or connect with Dr. Kelly:
Next Steps
- Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
- Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.
https://monetizationnation.com/blog/why-customer-service-is-important/
