In every business, the ultimate golden rule is: customer is king.  The ability to satisfy customers has been the core of every successful business. Every business owner should make every effort to build a great experience for their customers especially if you are in a call center or customer service industry. If you are still wondering why you should bother to address even a single customer's experience, consider the fact that you may not have any customers if you ignore one.

Here's a story from a customer who was really enraged by his experience when he called a customer service hotline of a website hosting company.  Let us call him Ryan.

Ryan called the customer service hotline on Thursday to ask the web hosting company if they could restore the data in his computer. By Saturday, it still wasn't done. He called again that Saturday and asked what was going on. He was told that the process would be finished in 24 to 48 hours, maximum.

Monday came, still nothing happened. He called again and pissed that nothing has done about it. He got an answer that it would be finished in 6 hours.

After fifteen hours of waiting, still it wasn't restored. He said that every time he called, he was specific about the date that he wanted the back-up restored. The customer service agent he talked to even told him about the exact dates and times that the data would be restored.

He called back again and after being run around for 25 minutes, the customer service representative came back and told him that the company does not actually have any back up system in place. Ryan felt so frustrated when he heard those words from the agent.  It was a nightmare for him because he had lost all his data.

“So we argued for 15 minutes and you even refused to transfer me to a supervisor.  You even told me that the supervisor was too busy to take my call,” said Ryan.   “You played hold-chicken with me and left me waiting for twenty minutes when I asked to be transferred to the billing department,” he added.

Exasperated, Ryan just hung up the phone and made his final decision.  As you would actually would have guessed now, he canceled his account. Ryan transferred to another web hosting company.

There is no excuse for treating customers like what had happened to a very disappointed Ryan. He is one prime example of a dissatisfied customer. It seems that the customer service representative forgot that the most important component of a company is the customer. Without customers like Ryan, a business won't get an income. Admittedly, a business exists to earn a profit. Without customers who are willing to make purchases for a certain product or service, a business might fall into bankruptcy. Making a product attractive and spending a lot of money on advertising will not make customers purchase your product, especially if they were treated poorly.

The experience of a customer is determined by the way the company's customer service was provided.  Was the customer satisfied with what he or she heard or encountered? People who have good experiences tell a few friends, people who have bad experiences tell everyone they know. Remember that statistics show that “word of mouth” is still the best form of advertising. So why not make some changes and leave a good impression on your customers?