silent customer

By Laurie Morrow, Vice President, Research Strategy

Have you ever been so pleased with an experience in a store, restaurant or other establishment you do business with, that you went out of your way to tell the management how delighted you were with the experience?

No. Neither have I. Most of the time, I’m just too busy.

On the flip side, have you ever been so dissatisfied with rude customer service, poor product quality or had an overall bad experience that you asked to speak to a manager, called their corporate office or written their corporate headquarters to complain?

On occasion, I have taken the time to express my dissatisfaction to management; but more often than not, I’ve kept it to myself instead of letting that company or manager know. Sometimes I may give them a second chance, giving them the benefit of the doubt that my next experience will be better; however,  other times I just stop doing business with the company altogether.

If this sounds familiar to you, we are what companies should fear most, the silent customer. Recent studies show 96 percent of customers will not complain, and 91 percent will simply never return.

The Threat

While silent customers don’t complain to management, they most certainly will share their experiences with their friends, neighbors and co-workers. A customer who is dissatisfied will tell between 9-15 people about their experience, with over one in ten telling 20 people about their bad experience.

The impact of negative word-of-mouth can be more devastating than ever as online and social tools that amplify word-of-mouth are increasingly more powerful. Seventy-six percent of consumers are using online reviews before determining which business to use, and over 1 million people view tweets about customer service every week and roughly 80 percent of those tweets are negative.

A negative review could be devastating in today’s viral world of social media.

What Can You Do?

Whatever your customer base, whether it is families, Fortune 500 firms or federal agencies, all businesses need to remember customer feedback is a gift. Hearing about a complaint or bad experience gives you the chance to right a wrong. It provides an opportunity to improve. Learning about small problems your customers are having can also help them from snowballing into a larger issue that can threaten their continued loyalty. On the flip side, hearing about what you are doing right can help you duplicate those activities, ensuring continued positive customer experiences.

Outreach efforts such as customer satisfaction surveys are a great way to identify those silent customers that might go unnoticed. While some may continue to remain silent, providing a mechanism for customers to give honest feedback is a good first step at identifying shortcomings that will ultimately lead to process improvement, increased customer satisfaction, and customer retention.

Interested in learning more? Read about the top three activities ensuring customer satisfaction.

Need help developing a customer satisfaction program? Contact Aaron Heffron, Market Connections president at aaronh@marketconnectionsinc.com.