In the business world, there really isn’t a more important aspect of success than making sure your business’ customer service is top notch. Whether dealing with consumers directly or dealing with other companies as your customers, there is nothing that can make or break a business faster than the level of customer service provided. 

Some companies go the extra mile by setting up contact centers for their customers to call or e-mail in the event that a problem arises. These can be costly in dollars and manpower, but if done right, they make up a large portion of the revenue streams because they keep customers truly happy.

Some companies actually have a couple of different levels of customer service. As a general rule, a company simply isn’t going to be very successful if customers find that they are not being serviced well. Some companies look at customer service as an added expense that they can’t really afford, but the bottom line is that good customer service can mean the difference in the bottom line in a positive way. Great customer service usually means higher profits, and having a top notch customer service team is an epitome of basically spending money to make money.

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A recent survey by industry analyst Forrester (News - Alert) shows that most companies seem to get it. In the survey, 40 percent of respondents answered that “improving the customer experience” was the most important customer service goal. Despite this, there are some who still don’t seem to understand the benefit of a good customer service approach, as 12 percent of respondents did answer that they wanted to “reduce customer service costs” as their top priority. 

Another 20 percent see the importance of using their customer service departments as a way to set themselves apart from their competitors, making it their top priority, and another 20 percent saw it as important but not all-important.

In general, it appears that a majority of business owners understand that customer service has a place in the planning for success for any company.