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\nIn some ways these expectations are no different in the B2B world. Business owners, senior managers, and key decision makers do not want to be contacting suppliers to resolve issues.\u00a0 This is partly due to the fact they don\u2019t want, or expect, them to arise in the first place. However, if and when they do, they want them solved with as little effort on their behalf as possible.<\/p>\n
Remaining focused on running and growing their own business is what\u2019s important, so as suppliers our ultimate goal should be providing a resolution as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n
Hand in hand with speed of resolution and responsiveness is the customer\u2019s evaluation of the quality of service they receive, which in turn impacts customer loyalty. Researchers from CEB<\/a>, (now part of Gartner) first discussed the idea that we should stop always trying to delight our customers in 2010.\u00a0 They claimed what customers really want is a low-effort experience, and reducing the amount of effort customers have to exert to get their issues resolved is a far higher driver of customer loyalty than delight. From this research a new customer metric Customer Effort Score (CES) was born.<\/p>\n Fast forward to today.\u00a0 Many organisations are still using the traditional CSAT and NPS surveys as a way of measuring customers satisfaction. Each have their merits and there are fans and critics of both, but unless there is an actionable plan from the outputs, the scores become nothing more than a number. Whilst a positive response can be a great morale boost for your customer service teams, they do nothing to really help develop strategies to improve customer service offering overall, and to retain customers.<\/p>\n Effort matters<\/strong><\/p>\n Customer frustration can be exacerbated from a perceived unnecessary increase in effort. \u00a0This could come from channel switching, and needing to repeat the explanation of an issue, or being forced down an inflexible \u2018one size fits all\u2019 service model which doesn\u2019t suit their needs. Indeed recent research by Gartner<\/a> found that 96% of customers who experience a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience.<\/p>\n Matt Dixon, author of the \u2018Effortless Experience\u2019 summarised the trend well when he wrote \u2018Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers\u00a0on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems,\u00a0not on how spectacular its service experience might\u00a0be.\u00a0Most customers don\u2019t want to be \u201cwowed\u201d; they\u00a0want an effortless experience.\u00a0<\/strong>And they are far more\u00a0likely to punish you for bad service than to reward\u00a0you for good service\u2019.<\/p>\n As well as affecting loyalty, customers with high effort experiences are also more likely to have cost a business more to serve. This is not just due to the repeat conversations which are taking place, and the resulting churn, but also the potential for negative written or word of mouth reviews, as well as reduced levels of future purchases.<\/p>\n
![\"Stewart](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Stewart-Kitson-SmartDebit.jpg\")
Stewart Kitson is Head of Customer Service at