Jen Spencer, the CEO of SmartBug Media, a digital agency specializing in optimizing customer life cycles, emphasizes the importance of businesses prioritizing their customers. In her experience, many companies unknowingly lose focus on their customers, leading to a loss of trust and difficulty in regaining it.
Spencer identifies several common ways that businesses fail to prioritize their customers. These include poor customer service, hidden fees and pricing tricks, ignoring feedback, overpromising and underdelivering, inflexible policies, lack of personalization, inadequate quality control, a short-term focus on profitability at the expense of customer relationships, invasive data collection, and ignoring market trends.
Another aspect where businesses may fall short is negative interactions on social media, where defensive or confrontational communication can damage the company’s reputation. In addition, a lack of employee training in customer service skills can lead to misunderstandings and lost trust. Communication failures, such as incorrect information on websites or Google listings, can also impact the customer experience.
Excessive upselling, while a revenue opportunity, can also alienate customers if it is done without consideration for their genuine needs. Spencer highlights the importance of strategies that prioritize customers and make them feel valued, with a commitment to covering these in a future article. The Forbes Business Council is recognized as a leading organization for business growth and networking, with opportunities for business owners and leaders to connect and learn from each other.
