Service is a belief!

Why do only a few excellent companies do better than their competitors year after year? Their customers are like possessed, only willing to do business with this trusted company, and continue to repurchase, increase wallet share, and even recommend them to their friends, showing extremely high stickiness. Strangely, they can easily forgive the problems of this company.

This is the power of belief. Service is a belief. If you believe that attentive service can exchange for customer loyalty, you can get higher customer stickiness, more repeat customers and word-of-mouth recommendations, higher profit returns, your marketing costs will be reduced, and you can be ahead of your competitors.

Unfortunately, many companies still firmly believe that market share is the determining factor of corporate profits, blindly pursue sales and market share, firmly believe in the batch advantage of “small profits but quick turnover”, believe that human nature is greedy and profit-seeking, customers only recognize price and benefits, and fight “price wars” in market competition, hoping to attract more customers to increase market share.

When I talked about “customer care” and “customer loyalty” in the service training class, some corporate managers were dismissive and thought that it was a naive idea for such a thing to happen in China. They firmly believed that as long as the price was low, even the most loyal customers could be won over. People die for money, and birds die for food. This will never change.

Peter Drucker said: “The greatest danger in turbulent times is not the turbulence itself, but still using the logic of the past to do things.” From the incremental market to the stock market, the concept of the enterprise must also change from flow thinking to viscosity thinking. Unfortunately, many companies still believe that price is the determining factor of the market, and send services as “auxiliary products”, resulting in lower and lower customer viscosity, and corporate profits continue to decline, making it more and more difficult to do business.

If you don’t believe in your heart that service can move customers and generate loyalty, and only believe in the power of price, you will not be able to experience the magic of loyal customers. Take a look at the key performance indicators KPIs in the current corporate service assessment. Almost all indicators are related to speed. It seems that fast speed is good service and can generate customer viscosity. No one has ever considered the emotional value and psychological experience of customers.

The object of service is people, not products or equipment, but many companies only require service personnel to have good skills and to be quick in troubleshooting. No one has ever taught them how to communicate with customers or how to think about problems from the perspective of customers. Gartner Group’s customer survey shows that restorative after-sales service not only cannot improve customer loyalty, but is also likely to lead to customer loss.

Some companies shout “customers are God” and “customers are always right” every day, as if these slogans can prove that they value service and regard service as a belief. In fact, this is not the case. These seemingly correct slogans cannot improve the quality of service. Managers who shout these slogans do not believe in the value of service at all, and will also confuse service personnel and make them at a loss when interacting with customers.

So far, customer service activities seem to be only the business of the after-sales service department, and have nothing to do with the company’s management and office. Few people regard service as a corporate culture, strategy, or even a belief, resulting in a low status for service personnel, almost no sense of existence in the company, and loud service slogans, but the service is given away for free.

What is the power of faith? If you firmly believe that sincerity can move mountains and open rocks, and believe that outstanding emotional experience in service can move customers, increase stickiness, make them keep repurchasing, increase wallet share, and recommend by word of mouth, you can turn service into belief and turn customers into friends. If you don’t believe in the value of service, service will be given away for free as a dispensable “auxiliary product”.

According to a four-year Harvard University study involving 16,000 people, the relationship between old customers and profitability is not strong. However, high-stickiness customers bring incredibly high profits. The profit created by high-stickiness customers is 120% of that of general old customers. Outstanding companies such as Zappos, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, TD Bank, Nordstrom Stores, Costco, etc. all regard service as their belief. Their successful practice proves that customer loyalty is a more important profit determinant than market share.

You can continue to keep a close eye on customers’ wallets and fight a “price war”, or you can use love to exchange for customer loyalty. Just like people’s beliefs, this is also the company’s own choice.