Customer Obsessed
Written By Mark Stevens
Med One recently held a leadership meeting where Operations Managers and members of their team from our several offices throughout the country gathered in La Mirada to teach, learn, and interact with each other. Over the two days, there were a variety of presentations and a great exchange of ideas, sharing what is working in their offices, and overall discussion about how to help Med One be in the best position to be successful.
It was enjoyable to witness the comradery among our operations people and a spirit of competitiveness among our different offices. There was one thing that united everyone: the desire to beat our competition and provide the BEST customer service to our customers. It was exciting to see story after story about winning
business with customers who had previously and exclusively done business with other companies.
The common theme is that our people are persistent but patient, professional, and will do what it takes to earn the trust of new customers because of the level of service they are willing to provide. Everything our operations teams discussed was in the spirit of improving our offices so we can be the type of company our customers want to do business with by having the best equipment available, fast delivery times, providing the best conditioned equipment.
At Med One, we talk frequently about the importance of providing nothing but the best customer service, learned from decades of experience and knowing how much it matters to the people we serve. The service our teams have demonstrated has won business for Med One and is allowing us to retain customers because of the relationships we are building through our great sales teams and the operations teams.
Customer service is an area that is constantly studied to analyze trends, understand the habits of consumers and organizations, and determine areas of opportunity for businesses to improve. I came across a collection of statistics recently with noteworthy findings:
CUSTOMER SERVICE STATS
- 3 out of 4 consumers will spend more with businesses that care about providing a good customer service experience.
- Over half of consumers believe great customer service is more important than product price.
- 87% of consumers trust a company or brand more if they provide an excellent customer experience.
- Customer obsessed organizations reported 41% faster revenue growth than those at the non-customer obsessed organizations.
- 85% of consumers go out of their way to switch to a company that has better customer service.
- Customer obsessed organizations reported 51% better customer retention.
There is also some disheartening data when it comes to customer service:
More than half of consumers will switch to a competitor after only one bad experience.
Only two negative experiences could lead to brand abandonment.
Over half of consumers rarely complain about a negative customer experience, they quietly switch to a competitor instead.
As I read these findings, and there were many others, I thought about Med One’s consistent desire to put customers first and the successes we’ve had winning business from our competitors because we are willing to do whatever it takes, the right way, so we can be trusted to deliver on the promises we make. But on the other hand, I thought about how many times we may have lost a customer because we fell short of a customer’s expectations. Maybe we didn’t have a certain product, we did not deliver in the time we committed, or we didn’t give enough time or thought to a question, complaint, or request of a customer. I hope those instances are rare but as studies show, we may never know when a customer leaves quietly to go somewhere else.
With the data I recently looked over and stacking that up against our operations leadership meeting and the dynamic group of people in the room provided me with an important take away; looking introspectively, how do I need to improve my interactions with customers? Where am I falling short in making sure I am contributing to the effort to give our customers reason to be keep coming.
Being a customer obsessed organization takes discipline, consistency, leadership, great messaging, and buy in from the people tasked with the responsibility of interacting with customers. We are fortunate at Med One to have people who don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk, and their focus is to put the Med One Way into practice for the sake of our customers. I’m proud of the great people representing Med One, making a difference and improving lives because they care. May we all take time to consider how we can recommit ourselves to working with a mindset of being customer obsessed.
