Now here’s an interesting thing. Out of curiosity, I typed in Customer Service Number into some nifty software which tells me what phrases people are using to search on Google and other search engines.
It turns out that here are an awful lot of people looking for telephone help for particular products or companies.
Many. many more than I would have guessed.
In fact, there are around 113,000 searches on Google every day for customer service numbers.
Now what does that tell you?
First of all, people use the Internet like a phone directory – so it’s not exactly surprising to see the more general broach searches which include:
- customer service phone numbers
- technical support number
- customer service 800
Searches for these run into the thousands each day.
What I did find more surprising was the number of searches for a specific product or company service. It turns out that people don’t have the required customer service numbers at their fingertips. So there are hundreds, if not thousands of searches for help from Microsoft, Gateway, Hotmail, Toshiba, Samsung, Canon… you name it, each and every day.
So here’s the lesson for small businesses. Don’t do what the big guys do. Make sure that your customers have all the ways they need to contact you. That means noting your contact numbers in your email signature, giving out fridge magnets, sending regular updates by snail mail… whatever it takes to make sure that your customers know how to get help quickly.
Because if they don’t, you can be sure of one thing. They’ll be telling their friends and acquaintances how terrible your customer service is. The bigger companies can weather that kind of storm much better than you can.
So make your customer service number stand out and, as the song says, Keep Your Customers Satisfied.
