Customer service is vital in all businesses – including businesses in the fitness and leisure industry. Excellent customer service can do miracles and make your members feel even closer to your business. On the other hand, poor customer service can push your members away.
In this blog post, we will take a closer look at how data shows which effect customer service – both good and poor – has on your business.
Statistic #1: Interaction is key
Interactions between your staff and the members have a big impact on how close a member feels towards your business. Even small interactions can make a huge difference when it comes to loyalty and churn rate.
According to a member retention report from IHRSA, the average churn rate each month is 16% for the group of members who haven’t received any interaction from the staff the current month.
However, just one interaction with the same group of members can push the churn rate down to 7%. That corresponds to a 56.25% decrease in churn rate – based on only one interaction with the members.
Imagine how your churn rate will be affected if you interact with your members more than one time each month?
Statistic #2: Customer service is a key attribute for members to feel loyal
When you want to keep your members loyal to your business, there are multiple buttons to push. Not surprisingly, price is a popular one. However, in hot pursuit is customer service.
Actually, Zendesk reports that 57% of consumers state that customer service is a key attribute for them to feel loyal to a business.
Statistic #3: Evoke positive member behaviour with excellent customer service
Studies show that your members will have a positive reaction when you give them a great customer service experience. That means you can create a chain reaction of positive behaviour after just one good experience.
Qualtrics reports that when consumers experience “good” customer service, they will purchase 34% more, recommend your business 38% more, trust your business 26% more and forgive your business 33% more.
Statistic #4: Are you chasing members into the arms of your competitors?
Let’s look at the flip side of customer service – the bad one. Bad experiences can have a huge impact on the loyalty of your members.
Zendesk found that as many as 80% - or 8 out of 10 - of consumers would switch to a competitor after having more than one bad experience.
Statistic #5: Very poor customer service is hard to forgive
Even though you might try very hard to avoid mistakes, they can happen from time to time. You might move on pretty quickly, but that is not necessarily the case for your customer.
Actually, it can be difficult for your customer to forgive if they experience “very poor” customer service. According to Qualtrics, 85% of consumers experiencing “very poor” customer service will not forgive the company.
Statistics #6: Excellent customer service can make up for mistakes
Now we know that a bad customer experience can be hard to forgive. What happens if a mistake is solved with excellent customer service?
Salesforce reports that 78% of customers will forgive a company for its mistake if they receive excellent customer service.
Act on these statistics
It might not come as a surprise that good customer service will increase loyalty, and bad customer service will have a negative impact. However, these statistics might come as a surprise on how big an effect both good and bad experiences have on your members’ perception of your business.
Hopefully, these statistics will give you some food for thought on how much you should prioritise your customer service.
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