Businesses everywhere, notably large ones, should take note of a recent consumer survey which revealed that many big name companies provide poor customer service.
The brunt of the consumer angst is directed at telecommunications companies– AOL had the worst rating with Comcast right behind – but a variety of retail and service providers dot this list.
The survey was commissioned by MSN Money and conducted by Zogby International. See the companies’ rankings here.
Historically, small businesses have used exceptional customer service to attract customers alienated by the giants, but I don’t think size is the problem.
The top 10 companies (those with best customer service according to the MSN survey) are as follows: Marriott; Sheraton; Amazon.com; Hilton; Trader Joe’s; Google; Hampton Inn; Nordstrom, Whole Foods Market and Holiday Inn. Nordstrom has 55,000 employees; Hilton has 100,000 employees; and Marriott has 151,000 employees. Size doesn’t seem to be a problem with them.
My experience is that large companies provide poor customer service either because of understaffing (to save themselves money) or poor training of front-line staff. Often, it’s a combination of the two.
Take Food Lion, for example. Forget about running in to grab a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. If you are silly enough to try, at least bring a book, because it will take awhile to get the poorly-trained cashier to move through his or her paces. The manager at my local store always waits until the line is finally down to the one person before she rushes to open a second register, as if she’s helping. This is frustrating to customers, like me, who have decided to drive the extra two miles to Publix, where they somehow always get it right (11th best rating in survey, by the way).
Good customer service can be achieved, I don’t care how big or complicated your operation.
Properly train your employees. Put enough of them on the front line. Incentivize them to do well. Get rid of those who don’t. Survey your customers. Hold people accountable.
If you can’t figure it out, please hire someone who can help.
MSN Money will do another survey next year. You can either elevate yourself like Nordstrom or you can sink into AOL-dom and end up on my blog again. You’ve got one year to figure it out.
Until then, see you at Publix.
May 30, 2008 at 9:16 pm |
Good article.
Customer service is a key differentiator among companies and in a recession will be even more important in consumer spending decisions.
June 26, 2008 at 9:02 am |
I work at the front desk at the hampton Inn and were extremely glad to see that we were in the top ten category. We really do try to accomodate guests and provide great customer service I’m glad to see that it pays off. Thank you
January 27, 2009 at 12:19 pm |
I don’t know about this….I recently had a bad experience with Amazon and I come to find out…there are a lot of people upset with Amazon customer service. I don’t get it. Large companies can afford great customer service.
January 28, 2009 at 9:04 am |
This is a fair comment. Even the best companies mess up sometimes. I think the best companies are consistently good at customer service with the vast majority of their customers, and then make things right the few times they fall down.