Perhaps the only thing more difficult than keeping customers satisfied and doing more business with you is finding out when and why they are not. While feedback from any customer is usually of the negative variety – people are generally more vocal when they have a problem – even that communication represents a small share of the total number of customer experiences.
So while you may think you are doing a fine job, you may not really know unless you ask the question. The cost of not doing so can be steep.
“If a customer has a bad experience – they get the wrong part, they feel they were overcharged, they didn’t like the way they were treated by the salesperson – the propensity is that you will never hear about it,” says Bruce Plaxton, president of BGP Marketing. “That dissatisfied customer will simply be resentful and take his business elsewhere.”
And they typically aren’t quiet about it. Plaxton says they are sharing their dissatisfaction with others. “They always are. Particularly the smaller customers. They sit around these truck stops and if they feel they’ve been mistreated, they let everybody in the world know,” he says. “There’s not much you can do about it at that point, and for the average distributor, that’s the core of their business – the small guy, it’s not the major fleets.”
Keeping customers satisfied also can help mitigate the inevitable little bumps in the road. Resolving larger issues quickly and effectively instills customer loyalty and gives them a reason not to look elsewhere for their parts and service needs.
“Our research has shown that a customer who is highly satisfied is a lot less likely to jump due to other factors,” says Brian Etchells, senior research manager for J.D. Power and Associates. “So, if you’re an independent, and maybe your parts prices aren’t as competitive as somebody who’s trying to low ball and get new customers, if your customers are really satisfied, they are more reluctant to changing [to a competitive source]. They are going to be more loyal to you and stay with your company.”
It’s also accepted wisdom that it takes far less resources and effort to keep an existing customer than to gain a new one.
