Customers Willing to Pay for Exceptional Service

With each passing day, more and more evidence suggests that providing differentiated customer service is financially rewarding for corporations.  Are we at a point where the C-suite realizes that exceptional customer service can create a sustainable competitive advantage?  How will your company respond?

In the B2B space, a recent Finextra Research study showed that:

• 68% of corporations would switch banks for better customer service
• 57% would pay higher fees for a better customer experience

While in the B2C arena, a Harris Interactive study noted:

• 85% of consumers would pay more for better customer service
• 10% would pay a whopping 25% more!

Can executive management afford to continue to take a short-term view of their customers and their business?  Or are there still some who claim the way to improved stock performance is to cut costs at the expense of customers?  Taking that path has pitfalls (see below).  Question is… how will corporations respond?

That same Harris study suggested that:

• 82% of respondents had stopped doing business with companies that provide poor service
• 40% switched to competitors who had “exceptional” service

The pivot point is that during increasingly competitive times the fastest way to profits may not be acquisitions, innovation or cost-cutting, but in taking care of customers.  The numbers don’t lie.  Here’s hoping executive leadership will look up from the sand to take notice and here’s hoping Wall Street will give exceptional service its due.