Interesting little survey on Why Great Customer Service is Worth It
A couple of things that struck me about the survey results here.
1) I think it is fairly obvious that customer service greatly impacts how you feel about a company. Note government and Comcast are mentioned as rating low, but they mostly don't have any competition so they don't feel they need to work on it I suppose. But a warning to those companies that think they don't need to worry about it. Some new technology or start up may come in (read Netflix and Hulu) and then you are left trying to play clean up after having a pretty solidly established terribly reputation.
2) I thought it was interesting that timeliness of response and personality came in 2 and 3 after ability to resolve problem. I have definitely found that putting off what you know is going to be an unpleasant customer service phone call only makes people angrier. Taking a very defensive attitude is also not going to help you. 6 times out of 10 I can't do anything about your problem or I'd have fixed it already but just calling quickly and listening is important. Also looking into the problem and figuring out what went wrong and why and how it can be avoided in the future is crucial. Sometimes this means having something remade or sending out a new part or different contractor to take care of this customer. But more often than not it means looking at processes that led to this being a problem in the first place and trying to keep it from repeating. That can often mean just setting better expectations so people aren't unpleasantly surprised because what is business as usual for you may be not at all what the customer expected.
3) Also I would much rather email someone myself as I'm pretty non confrontational and phone calls feel like a chore, getting through the tree, fending off sales pitches for additional services, waiting on hold, etc. But I can see where it might not be as satisfactory for some as it feel less connected and you want to feel like you are being heard.
4) It was nice to see Home Depot on the list. It is only a survey of 400 people so not that big of a sample but they are above Whole Foods and Target.