Is a Customer Service Strategy important?

Here's a question for a woman-owned business [okay, it's really a question for any business owned by anyone]: is it important to have a strategy in place for Customer Service?

Asked a different way: does your business plan include a well thought out strategy for Customer Service?  Is it written down as a policy and procedure kind of thing?  Or are your thoughts on the matter along these lines:

• My company is too small to worry about a hardcore customer service plan.
• I'm a solo-preneur, for what reason do I need a concrete customer service strategy?
• I believe in dealing with customer service issues as they arise.
• I'm more interested in attracting new customers than retaining old ones.

Recently I was given an interesting study regarding this very issue.  It came via Forbes.com Forbes Insights and is titled, "Strategies for Recovery: Woman-Owned Small Businesses Put the Customer First."  This was sponsored by Key4Women, a program of Key Bank.  The summary:

• "...There’s little doubt that woman-owned small businesses understand the importance of customer service, and coming out of the 2008-09 recession, boosting loyalty and retention are clearly top priorities. But even with this customer-centric approach, a sizable number of these companies are not taking advantage of the full range of loyalty tools, and many don’t even have a formal customer service strategy in place...."

In a nutshell this study - which was based on a survey of more than 300 women small business owners - examined their "attitudes and actions" on the subject of customer service and found that:

1. most relied on old-fashioned, "tried and true" customer service practices
2. most did not utilize online tactics [including social media] to enhance customer retention and prospecting
3. many were hampered by a lack of planning...knowing that customer service is a good thing is not enough...you need a plan for it

I found one of the statistics revealing in answer to the question: Does your company have a dedicated customer service strategy?

• 18% replied yes, they did have a concrete company-wide strategy
• 55% replied that they approached customer service on a case-by-case basis
• 27% replied no - no plan at all

My initial reaction to these figures was Oh My Gosh!  A whopping 27% of respondents had no plan at all for addressing customer service and a huge segment preferred the shotgun approach.  By this I mean that if you operate your customer service policy as case-by-case then you have no consistency.  Without a formal concrete strategy that takes into account the 1) nature of your business, 2) the nature of your products and/or services, 3) who your current customers are and 4) who your desired new customers are you are flying blind.  What you say to Customer A in Situation A will be different than how you handle Situation B with Customer B.  This could lead to all kinds of mis-communication and potential loss of both business and reputation.

Here's a very simplified example:  I have a candle business.   I make my products and sell them through craft shows and on consignment through gift shops.  I have no formal plan for customer service.  One day a customer contacts me saying that the package of candles she bought the previous week did not perform adequately and wished a refund.  I decided to go ahead and refund her purchase.  On another day a different customer contacts me and says she is displeased with her purchase and asks what recourse there might be.  In this case I tell her that every purchase is final.  I don't offer this customer a refund or a replacement.  Should these two customers ever find one another and compare notes...well, you can see the potential problems for my candle business.

Over the next few weeks I want to take a deeper look at the survey and present some thoughts and research of my own.  I also invite feedback; it would be great to get a discussion going.

In your business do you have a dedicated customer service strategy?