Commercial PropertyColdwell Banker Study Finds Customer Service Is Key To Repeat Business
It"s no surprise to learn that consumers will ditch service providers over bad service nearly as much as they will on price. The new Coldwell Banker® "Customer Service Study," prepared in conjunction with Harris Interactive in August 2004, quantifies customer dissatisfaction via an online poll.
Nine out of 10 consumers surveyed declared that great customer service is "very or extremely" important in deciding whether to give a service provider repeat business. They change providers because of bad service (32 percent) nearly as often as they change businesses for lower prices (38 percent).
Customer service should be a priority, suggests the study, but U.S. companies don"t give consumers much opportunity for feedback. One-quarter of surveyed consumers reported having frequent opportunities to voice their opinions on their service experiences, while one-third reported they had infrequent opportunities to do so.
The Coldwell Banker study surveyed 555 U.S. consumers who have bought or sold a home anytime in their lifetimes. The purpose of the study was to measure "consumer expectations and perceptions of overall customer service in a number of different industries."
The survey included a look at industries where customer satisfaction is particularly important with relationship to homeownership. Banking (73 percent), retail (59 percent), utility companies (57 percent) and insurance companies (57 percent) were ranked the highest. Banking scored particularly high because almost nine out of 10 respondents reported dealing with a bank at some point in their lives, more than any other business segment. Thirty-eight percent of consumers indicated that customer satisfaction is important when dealing with a real estate sales associate.
The survey also looked at real estate service and found that the top five most important customer service skills associated with buying or selling a home are:
Listening (58 percent)
Helping to select a home based on their requirements (48 percent)
Helping consumers understand the buying/selling process (34 percent)
Listing of the property/advertising (28 percent)
Market analysis (26 percent)
Not surprisingly, the study found "a strong correlation between the quality of a company"s customer service and its long-term success." According to the findings, the average U.S. consumer switched businesses they dealt with twice in the past three years due to "bad service."
When asked to define the differences between great and bad service, consumers said the top characteristics of companies with "great service" were:
Resolving questions and problems (66 percent)
Knowledge of the product or service (49 percent)
Being easy to reach (35 percent)
Understanding requirements (35 percent)
Conversely, top characteristics associated with "bad service" were:
Inability to resolve questions or problems (46 percent)
Being unavailable/difficult to reach (38 percent)
Needing to deal with multiple people/departments to resolve problems (37 percent)
Lack of product knowledge (34 percent)
Unprofessional demeanor (33 percent)
"Service is king, and it can make or break a company," said Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive officer for Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation. "Nothing beats knowledge, experience, problem-solving and responsiveness. Combining that with good manners usually wins a customer for life. It is one thing to talk about excellent customer service, but it is another to demand it and maintain it as a key element of an organization"s culture."
In general, the Coldwell Banker study found that the quality of customer service in the residential real estate segment has remained about the same (69 percent) as in the past, while 16 percent believe service levels have increased and 15 percent said they have declined.