Small businesses can differentiate themselves from others through great customer service – and have an effective opportunity to react to price pressure from bigger companies
Customers became more demanding – digitalisation has led to higher expectations of customers – markets are transparent – they can get nearly every product from nearly everywhere. Does this really mean that small businesses have no chance against the big companies because customers just buy the cheapest option they get (assumptions in the society)
A new study done Zendesk in September 2019 (https://www.zendesk.de/resources/customer-service-impact-small-businesses-germany/) wanted to find out the impact of customer service on small companies in Germany
Customers are eager to support small businesses and willing to pay more for good service. 81% said they are willing to support small businesses if it is easy; 80% said they are willing to pay bit more if they are getting outstanding service
Great customer service can be a huge advantage for small businesses – however they must really provide great customer experience to meet customer expectations.
However – small business have to provide really great customer experience through the services they offer. 63% say they expect small businesses to offer better customer service than the big ones. And only 9% say the are prepared to accept a smaller service level.
Customers expect a higher level of customer service experience than from bigger companies. Most important are:
- reaction time to a request – 55%,
- processing time – 47%
- working with someone who knows my specific situation – 43%
- feeling, to have a relationship – 39%
- working with someone who is flexible and can fulfil my needs – 37%
´However only 18% say that Price is the important criteria, 32% say it’s not an important criteria.