It’s simple and straight forward business practice to treat your customers well but this article is going to give you some solid statistics on why. These are our favourite four stats:

• 97% of customers use word of mouth to share their experiences.
• 85% of customers would be willing to pay more than the standard price for great service.
• 82% of customers stopped doing business over a negative experience.
• 63% of customers are willing to go back to a company after a negative experience if they received an apology or correction from a supervisor.

Late last year we went to a sales and service seminar. One of the major things we learnt that day was how money should be spent when it comes to marketing. One of the astonishing things we heard was 80% should be spent on retaining customers and the other 20% should be spent on obtaining new customers.

Although this seems like a huge disproportion, it makes sense. Your current customers are already spending money with you, they recognise your quality and therefore they should be looked after and encouraged to spend more through you. Also, there is no better way of gaining more customers than word of mouth via existing happy customers, and it costs you nothing.

In terms of getting a return on investment it is a lot more worthwhile to re-enforce your current customers to return, spend more money and keep them happy.