42% of Companies Don’t Listen to their Customers. Yikes. [New Service Data]

"We put the customer first!"

You've definitely heard this phrase before -- and probably from more than one company. This statement is a foundational promise in countless mission statements, website headlines, and choruses of customer service teams everywhere. Today, it's hard to find a company thatdoesn'tsay, "we put the customer first" in some part of their messaging.

But here's a tough question: how many of these companies go beyond a marketing message and actually take the necessary steps to put their customers first?

根据新的Hubspot研究 - 其中还不够。我们发现一个令人惊讶的42% of companies don't survey their customers or collect feedback.

如果您不努力听取客户所说的bob全站app话，您的公司如何声称将客户放在首位？

事实是：即使大多数企业声称自己是“客户”，但他们并没有采取措施实际上为客户提供。

这可能就是为什么只有12％的人说“我们将客户放在首位”时，实际上只有12％的人相信业务。

As part of alarger research effortwe surveyed over one thousand customer service agents across the world to understand how they use customer data.

当他们说自己是“客户”时，大多数企业都很好意，但是现在该做更多的事情了。

If you want to truly build your business around your customers, there are some simple steps you can take to start. Trysurveying your customers,创建客户代码, or researching howother companies have successfully grown with a customer-first mindset.

收紧您对客户的关注以及他们对您的公司/产品/服务的感觉对增长至关重要。bob全站app我们的调查发现69.5％的公司表示，审查网站，社交媒体或口碑直接推动其业务领先。The only way to consistently generate that organic growth is through a great customer experience, and truly understanding your customers.

Power Has Shifted to Customers

A tight customer focus is critical to growth -- in part because customers today have unprecedented power in the buying process.

Today, your customers are much better informed than ever before.76.2％的客户服务专业人员同意，当今的客户比以往更加了解。

更聪明的消费者期望您的公司更多 - 我们发现的数据支持了消费者行为的这一趋势。bob全站app87.8% agreed that customers have higher expectations than ever.

这些高度期望的一个重要因素是社交媒体的兴起。Twitter和Facebook等社交平台为客户提供了更大的声音，并授权他们与更大的受众分享他们的经验。我们的调查受访者指出，这种现象是：they overwhelming agreed (89.17%) that customers today are more likely than ever to share positive or negative experiences.

Let's add this all up. Customers today are: smarter, have higher expectations, and -- good or bad -- are very likely to share their experiences on social media. It's simple to see how much more power they have than in the past. This is scary if you're aren't obsessed with your customers experience. However, if you have a great product and offer a great customer experience, this is great news. It should translate directly to growth through customer advocates.

What Does the Modern Buyer Want?

People today are clearly changing, but what do these empowered consumerswant? We asked a series of questions to understand what they look for when evaluating products.

This one may be obvious, but95% of respondents do research online when they have a need for a new product or service.我们都知道了一段时间，但是消费者在进行这项研究时要寻找什么？

Top 5 Needs During Online Research in 2019

1. Product information (demos / explainers) (52%)
2. Reviews and social proof from users like them (44%)
3. Discounts and deals (42%)
4. Customer examples / Case studies (33%)
5. 教育内容/策略/最佳实践(32%)

People are clearly on the hunt for specific information about products (52%). They want to understand what something does when they buy it. They also are price conscious and (42%) on the hunt for discounts and deals.

由于这些原因，在您的网站上提供有关您的产品或服务将交付的信息以及其成本的信息比以往任何时候都重要。但是大多数企业网站都做得很好。What they don't do a good job of is delivering social proof.

Reviews and social proof (44%) and customers examples / case studies (33%) are two similar buckets of information that heavily impact how customers view your business. Today, customers are smarter, which means that they are less influenced by what you have to say and instead want to hear from people like them.

创建愿意填写评论和志愿服务的快乐客户是建立这种社会证明的第一步。然后，您需要创建真实advocacy programsto help create and promote this content. Most businesses don't do this.Only 19% of companies have a formal customer advocacy program.这取决于服务和营销团队，共同努力创建此社会证明并将其构建到您的外部营销渠道中。

It's also interesting that reviews rank higher than case studies. While both offer social proof, reviews are less filtered by a company than case studies. Why do people like reviews more? Simple, they are perceived as more trustworthy. When you're a startup and lack a successful customer base marketing can be your voice, but when you're a scale-up, customers have to become your voice and integrated into your marketing campaigns.

How Can Your Business Adapt?

The easiest way to act on being more customer first is to open up and formalize listening channels. How do your customers want to communicate with you? Are you recording that data systematically? Are you asking the right questions?

Live Chat

Live chat只是一个捕获客户见解的渠道 - 但它很受欢迎，这是有原因的，可以帮助增加您获得的反馈量。它还实时提供客户答案。很难低估一个快速的答案可以使客户的快乐有多快乐。实时聊天并不适合所有人，但是我们很惊讶地看到76％的公司没有。在投资实时聊天的公司中，93％的人发现它是帮助客户的成功渠道。Indicating that it's likely a big opportunity for many companies.

帮助台

Opening your Service team up to more incoming customer questions can be tricky. There is always a chance your team will get overwhelmed quickly, especially if you're growing. As such, it's important to design the customer experience you want -- one that's great for your customers, but also allows you to scale your team effectively.

建筑help deskis going to allow you to do this. A help desk combines different customer channels with a shared inbox, tickets, automation, and reporting to deliver the ideal customer experience. However, just like with live chat, there are still a lot of companies that don't use a help desk.53.4%的公司没有帮助p desk system.然而，of those that do -- 85.4% said it makes them more productive.It's pretty tough to get 1,000 people to agree on much, but the results are pretty clear: a help desk will make you more productive.

Self-Service Solutions

也许帮助更聪明，更精明的客户的最佳方法是帮助他们自助。Self-servicesolutions give your customers what they need to solve their own problems. When done right, this creates a better customer experience and saves you and customers time.

It's like when you used to have to stop on the highway at a toll booth and hand your toll money to a human. That's a painful, disruptive experience. Today, you can buy your own E-ZPass and cruise on by. A much better solution. A great知识库等效于E-ZPass。您的客户可以在Google上搜索他们的答案，这些答案是他们使用的答案，在您的网站上找到信息，他们可以在时间上完成所有信息。

然而，56.3% of companies don't not use a knowledge base to help their customers。很可惜 - 福雷斯特报告说70％的客户喜欢使用公司的网站获得答案bob全站app出于他们的问题而不是使用电话或电子邮件与客户服务部门联系。

Customers are the Key to Growth

根据我们的发现，很明显客户已经改变。今天，他们期望更多，很难给人留下深刻的印象，他们的声音更大。但是，当您确实建立出色的客户体验使客户感到高兴，并与他们合作以突出他们的成功时，这些挑剔的客户可能会成为您增长的秘诀。赋予客户权力的公司反过来将取得成功，但他们必须将客户放在首位，并奉献自己的成功。

For more ways to put the customer first, read about how you can becomecustomer-centric。