How Customer Services can help you get more sales, and drop your costs

Boohoo is one online retailer I will never forget, and it is no surprise they are a fast growing retailer in the fashion space. Let us share an interesting experience with this fashion store to illustrate some business lessons from a customer service perspective.

My wife ordered a bag from the fashion retailer’s online store only to receive a bag with a slightly faulty handle. Unfortunately, the bag was for her mum, who was travelling the next day. Hearing about this, the store apologised immediately, sent a replacement the same day through a speedy priority delivery service, and the new bag arrived just in time.

On top of that, the store told my wife to keep the first bag too. She was delighted, and it was so cool experiecing the surprise gesture from a brand.

I’ve shared this particular story many times to illustrate the importance of customer services especially from a brand’s perspective. Asides keeping my wife as a loyal-customer, she has bought from the store many times after. Asides that, between us, we’ve shared this experience to so many of our friends who have decided to buy from Boohoo just for the experience we shared.

So in essence, their customer services have brought them a number of benefits in this simple example, so you can imagine how they can grow their clientelle, boost their sales and promote their brand on a large scale.

Take home points from this experience

1. Positive Word of Mouth will attract more customers to your brand — if you want your customers to promote your brand and bring other customers to you, very simple, give them an experience worth talking about. This gives new and undecided customers a reason to come shop from you, leading to more customers and more sales for you.
2. Customer complaints provide opportunities too — a lot of businesses dread customer complaints. But even if you have the best product, service and process in the world, things can still go wrong. A lot of times, how you handle the situation decides if the customer will come back or never again. In this example story, Boohoo turned a customer complaint into a positive unforttable experience for the customer.
3. Customer loyalty reduces your marketing costs — when you turn a first time buyer into a recurring customer, you increase the customer lifetime value (CLV) and drop your marketing costs at the same time. It takes a fifth effort/cost to market an existing customer than to convince a first time buyer to buy your products/services. This is why customer retention is very important as it contributes to your revenue immensely.
4. Customer services gives you more business insight — you will think the only insight you get from customer services are customer interactions, but there’s more to it. Although I am not aware of what happenes behind the Boohoo scenes, I am confident they are able to identify the root cause of the faulty bag handle and prevent it from happening again. This will help improve products, services and of course boost customer satisfaction.
5. Using urgency as a tool to win customers — we are in a fast-paced world where customers want it quickly. The average customer wants a response to their enquiry within the hour. Thier patience can be unforgiving when a complaint has been registered. So like Boohoo, leverage urgency as a tool to show you’re prioritsing customer needs. It makes a difference when you take their needs and their time seriously.

To Summarise

The truth is, I have seen how Customer Services have been used by many organisations/businesses in so many ways as a strategy for business growth. Gone are the days when customer services were simply a call center or a complaints desk. It is much more than that today, but more of a revenue/profit generating center through which a business can truly drive business growth through customer acquisition and more sales.

And when you can truly see the strategic view of Customer Services, you will be able to leverage the opportunities to boost customer loyalty, drive more sales, retain your customers and grow a more profitable business too.

Really keen on getting your thoughts on this article. If you have any comments or contributions, please share in the comments.