Turning Customers into Repeat Customers

This post is written by Salil Gupta, Managing Partner at Vcare Technology, a provider of contact center services to online retailers.

Recently, we at Vcare wanted to understand what is the relation between a great customer experience and the likelihood that the customer would return to the same company.

In short, just how important is good customer service?

While most companies acknowledge the importance of providing great customer service, doing so is costly and can sometimes seem to be nothing more than a necessary burden.

For many of us, the question inevitably arises: How much should we really invest in our customer-service solutions? Before you answer, let's take a closer look at the results.

Whether contact is made by phone, email or chat, we determined that a good customer service experience is one in which the customer's contact is responded in a reasonable amount of time, the customer's issue is resolved during the first interaction and the customer service experience is friendly, and the customer is satisfied.

The next step was to measure the correlation between a good customer service experience and the likelihood that the customer would return to the same company for a future purchase. We found this correlation to be .85 (the highest outcome would be 1 and the lowest 0). Statistics might not be the most exciting topic of discussion, but a simple truth exists in these numbers. Providing a good customer service experience means people will be very likely to become repeat customers, and this translates into building loyal customers.

We all know that means one magic word: growth. A resolved customer-service issue can create a stronger relationship. So instead of asking how much to invest in customer-service solutions, you might want to ask: how much should I invest in building a base of loyal customers?