Customer service is an essential unit of any company. Stats suggest that it is five to twenty-five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. This is because there are a lot of components that go into acquiring a new customer and in comparison, much fewer resources and efforts are needed to provide a good customer service experience that is vital for customer retention.

After the pandemic, it has become even harder not only to acquire a customer but to retain them as well since most people are going through a critical financial situation that has made them more skeptical about how they spend their hard-earned money. Due to these reasons, customers now do thorough research about a brand and product before deciding to sign up since they don’t want their money to go to waste.

We are living in an online world where everything is present on the web for everyone to see and analyze. Online reviews from actual customers are the main make-or-break components that ultimately determine if a new customer will go with a company or not. These reviews and brand perceptions can only be sculpted through good customer service.

An efficient customer service team can make the customers feel deeply valued. As long as customers keep getting relevant solutions to their queries, their loyalty to a brand remains intact, as this invokes a sense of responsibility that their company actually listens to them. This is the model which Cox cable customer service follows, which has allowed them to become the third-largest cable company in the United States. A customer chunk this big means their customer retention rate is quite high which is only possible through good customer service.

Since consumers of today have become more aware of their rights, the importance of customer service has drastically increased in the post-pandemic era. Let us explain how.

Importance of Customer Service Post-Pandemic

We are getting out of a very critical time, which had gripped the whole world for the past two years. Yes, we are talking about the pandemic. This health crisis was not only hard on our health but on the economy of the world as a whole, because the resulting lockdowns jammed the economic activities as businesses and corporates were completely shut down in response to the crisis.

This was immensely damaging for small businesses as many were forced to completely cease operations; some filed for bankruptcy while others barely made it. This became a reality check for everyone who thought that running a business was a piece of cake. On the other hand, consumers’ buying power was also reduced drastically due to unemployment. People became too diligent to spend their money on businesses that took them for granted.

As things are starting to get back to normal, some factors are here to stay and one of them is consumer awareness. Consumers know how much power they hold over a business, these days, since a business without its consumers is nothing. In times like these, good customer service plays a vital part in deciding whether a customer is going to stick with a business or not.

Now, businesses need their customers more, as compared to customers who need a business’s products or services. So, it has become the need of the hour that businesses utilize good customer service and take care of their consumer’s needs if they want to survive in this cut-throat market.

Because if they are not going to treat their customers right, someone else will. Not only that, there are many other benefits of good customer service that can immensely help a business grow; some of those points we have discussed in detail below.

Effects of Good Customer Service on a Business

1. Positive Brand Image

Good customer service can either make or break the brand image of a business and in the current business landscape, brand value is everything. There are very few consumers that actually research a product since most are interested in the brand’s reputation. Why do you think people prefer companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, Nike, or Nestle, even though there are a lot of alternatives to them in the consumer market?

Just because of the brand value.

People trust companies that have a good brand image and a loyal consumer base, and this brand value partly comes from the product while the major chunk is through good customer care.

2. Customer Satisfaction

This is also a very important aspect of business that many firms strive to achieve, although not many succeed at it, unfortunately. Customer satisfaction is quite necessary for the long-term survival of any business because today it is easy to acquire a customer through various marketing ploys and attractive pricing but the thing that actually matters is how long the customer is going to stick to a business.

The retention of a customer, which we have already heavily emphasized, depends on their satisfaction level with a firm. This satisfaction level is directly associated with how they are treated by their service provider, and all this happens through customer service.

So, as long as your customer is not satisfied with your brand, your flourishing business can go downhill in no time. Similarly, when a consumer is receiving necessary help and assistance, they will not only stick with a business, but will also give more reasons to increase the revenue of a firm e.g. Upsell Opportunities.

3. Free Marketing

A firm spends so much in marketing its products and services and still, there is no guarantee if these tactics are going to yield the desired results or not. However, most companies do forget that an effective and guaranteed way of doing successful marketing is through positive word of mouth. This is something that directly correlates to our previous point of customer satisfaction.

A happy customer propagates your brand name and products among other potential consumers and people tend to believe organic reviews more as compared to digital ones because they can be easily faked. Indeed, customer satisfaction is something that not only helps with revenue but also in marketing.

We already discussed that the world is in a dire financial state, and even businesses don’t have enough to spend on different aspects due to tough economic constraints. In times like these, firms should only focus on customer satisfaction as it will help them with cost-cutting, for example, saving the costs and spending on marketing. And we already explained in the previous point that the key to every customer’s heart is good customer care and services. So, in a way, businesses should invest in making their customer service teams better, as it will help them in various avenues like brand image, customer loyalty, and free marketing.

Conclusion

After the pandemic, the world of business has shifted from being company-oriented to consumer-oriented, and in this landscape, the customer is the king. So, whoever keeps the customer happy will be able to succeed in this competitive business landscape and the only way to keep your customer happy is through good customer service.

Thus, in the post-pandemic era, the importance of customer service is greatly increased and it’s about time businesses should start taking it seriously as well.