{"id":9598,"date":"2016-08-29T15:29:40","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T15:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/?p=9598"},"modified":"2022-10-05T16:20:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:20:05","slug":"the-205-rule-of-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/the-205-rule-of-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"The 20\/5 Rule of Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On average, when people are asked to share their experiences, they share 20 negative experiences vs. 5 awesome experiences \u2013 this is the 20\/5 rule of customer service.<\/p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9603\" src=\"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/205-1.jpg\" alt=\"customer service rule\" width=\"500\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/205-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/205-1-300x206.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/>\n<p>The 20\/5 Rule is simple to understand and everyone instinctively knows it to be true. It focuses on what people talk about &#8211; what they tell others about you. It focuses on &#8220;Awesome Customer Experiences&#8221; as opposed to &#8220;Terrible Customer Experiences.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here is a simple test you can give your own team sometime &#8211; I guarentee it will be enlightening!\u00a0Here&#8217;s how it works..<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Give everyone two sheets of paper with the numbers 1 through 20 listed down the left side<\/li>\n<li>Ask them to take the first sheet and label it &#8220;Awful and Ugly Experiences&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Take the second sheet of paper and label it &#8220;Incredibly Awesome and Memorable Experiences&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Now ask them to start writing about their experiences on both sheets &#8211; without lots of detail but some highlights they remember about them<\/li>\n<li>Give them 20 minutes total time &#8211; asking them to complete as much as they can on both sheets<\/li>\n<li>Collect all the papers and total up the numbers in both columns for the group &#8211; the ratio will be very close to 20\/5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When you discuss this with your team you may find some very interesting comments focused around two primary areas:<\/p>\n<p>1. It was very easy to recall the awful experiences &#8211; they jumped to the front of their minds and were usually some of the most recent ones they had.<\/p>\n<p>2. They had to really think hard about the awesome experiences &#8211; and it was actually quite difficult to recall some that were really incredible and memorable.<\/p>\n<p>When they were thinking about the negative experiences you probably watched their faces grimace a bit and feel the tenseness in the room. But when they were writing about their positive experiences, they were happy and you could see some smiles on their faces.<\/p>\n<p>The reason you get so few awesome experiences is because people don&#8217;t\u00a0remember their great experiences &#8211; only their bad ones. Most customers are almost comatose when they interact with businesses because it&#8217;s the same old thing over and over again with no reason to perk up and say WOW this is incredible! They might be great &#8211; but they aren&#8217;t incredible and they aren&#8217;t memorable.<\/p>\n<p>The best companies change that, they get WOW from their customers. Today, if you get WOW consistently and deeply you create advocates &#8211; The Holy Grail in today&#8217;s commoditized world. Because now these advocates can spread massive word of mouth\u00a0about how awesome you are to thousands thanks to the power of social media. No longer do you need a massive amount of marketing, you just need more advocates\/customers\u00a0singing your praises and doing it for you!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The\u00a064 thousand dollar question..<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How much would your business change if you were one of these elite 5 companies that got a &#8220;wow&#8221; from your customers &#8211; got talked about &#8211; and created more advocates?<\/p>\n<p>Give the test to your team and then create a strategy to be one of the 5 companies that create more advocates &#8211; and get their customers to do their marketing for them!<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blaine W. Millet is the co-author of the leading edge book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.customerexperiencesinc.com\/Pages\/book.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cCreating and Delivering Totally Awesome Customer Experiences\u201d<\/a>. He also has over 25 years experience working with companies in the areas of strategy, customer experiences\/loyalty, business operations, sales and management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On average, when people are asked to share their experiences, we find they share 20 negative experiences vs. 5 awesome experiences \u2013 this is the 20\/5 rule of customer service..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[250,120],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9598"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35488,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9598\/revisions\/35488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}