Customer Service Skills Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is Consistency, Reliability and Predictability So Important In Customer Service?
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Customers want and need a sense that the service they receive will be excellent each and every time they visit the vendor or company. Consistency, reliability and predictabilty are the cornerstones of creating long term relationships with customers, and customer retention and customer loyalty.
From Perfect Phrases for Performance For Customer Service:
Customers expect that you will treat them in a consisten way and that you will do what you say you will do each and every time. By acting in accordance with these wants, you provide the customer with a sense of security and confidence in you personally and in the company. This builds loyalty.
To understand this, all you need to do is think about large fast food chains or large hotel and motel chains. Why, for example, do people go to McDonald's? There's a lot of reasons (but food quality is probably not one of them), but the thing is that going to McDonalds' is fairly predictable. You know that whether you go to a McDonald's in New York, or California, Fargo, North Dakota, or London, England, the experience will be similar and fairly predictable.
It's the same for hotels. If you go to a Comfort Inn, you know exactly what you are going to get in advance. So, when you are unsure as to where to stay, you choose what you know and what is predictable. No matter where you go, if you stay at a Comfort Inn, you are going to have an almost identical room.
That's not saying that McDonalds, or Comfort Inn are everyone's taste. But it does demonstrate that reliability and consistency are important to the creation of loyal return customers.
Robert Bacal is the author of two books on customer service: Perfect Phrases for Customer Service: Hundreds of Tools, Techniques, and Scripts for Handling Any Situation, and Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook. Most of the questions and answers in the Customer Service Knowledgebase (which you are reading now) is based on the material in these books.