Author: Nick Bell (605) 937-5577 | nbell@asgteam.com

The Power of Customer Service and Customer Loyalty

It’s not a stretch to say that customer service is still important today, despite most consumers preferring to interact digitally rather than over the phone or in person. I would argue that it might be more important than ever to ensure you or your employees know how to provide good service to those struggling.

Case in point: I was recently traveling and experienced a flight delay (as most travelers have), which caused me to miss my connection and required me to rebook. While I wasn’t happy, it has happened to me often enough that I wasn’t mad and proceeded to rebook to find a way home.

My frustration came immediately during my first interaction with customer service: a gate agent dismissed me and directed me to their app, which provided no options for completing my trip. Over the course of the next several hours, I spoke with three different people in person and two over the phone (one of whom laughed at my situation and hung up). The takeaway I got from this airline about their opinion of customers was that they don’t care about the people who spend money on their services, and I won’t be using them again.

If you deal with customers as part of your job, you know that frustrating things often happen to them that are out of their control, and it’s important to help them out. Often, the most reliable and loyal customers aren’t the ones who have only had good experiences with a company but those who had a terrible one that was made right by people who cared and a customer service team that did their job correctly. If customer service is only a passive concern, be prepared to lose customers and your reputation.

Navigating Uncertainty in Today’s Market

While attending a conference recently, I had many conversations with fellow recruiters about their industries and the pulse of their markets. Throughout these discussions, one word kept coming up: uncertainty.

It seemed to be a catch-all for how the market was performing across a large variety of industries and companies, big and small. Employers are nervous about what the near term future holds for them, and employees are feeling it as well with a much cooler labor market.

Uncertainty seems to be the buzzword of the moment, and while that can be cause for concern, it doesn’t have to be. There was also a strong consensus among fellow colleagues that most organizations have been preparing for some headwinds and, in the long term, will be able to weather what comes their way.