Statistics of a Strong Service Culture - Service Quality Institute

There are so many financial benefits to creating a real service culture. You dramatically increase the value of the business. Significantly more than any competitor. Sales will be light years ahead of your competition. Market share will have a dramatic increase.

With COVID finally going into hiding it is time for organizations to dramatically improve their customer service. I believe customer service is worse today than when I developed Feelings in 1979, the first customer service program ever developed in the world.

Most US CEOs live in a make-believe world. About 90% of CEOs in the US would rate their customer service an 8, 9 or 10. If we asked the 330 million people living in the US to identify 5 customer service leaders about 99.9% would have trouble coming up with five.

I encourage you to follow and implement the steps in my Proven Process for Driving a Service Culture. The first step is Strategy. Very few CEOs understand the power of the Service Strategy. The Second is Leadership. Everyone in a leadership position has to walk the talk and support the customer experience. The third is Tools. Most firms have lots of employees. How do you cost-effectively train hundreds and thousands of employees? The Training Problem and SQI Solutions best explain our technology.

What a $9,000 Investment in 2003 Looks Like in 2023

Every year on January 1, I like to share the financial impact of the $9000 I invested in May 2003. The $9,000 as of January 1, 2023 is worth $102,754. This is almost 20 years ago I invested $1000 in the following nine companies that were service leaders at that time. I wanted to see what really happens to stocks if you deliver great customer service. All the dividends have been reinvested since May 2023 in the respective stocks. What I did not realize at the time is most of these firms would not be Relentless.

Amazon

I believe the most customer-driven firm in the world.

Value as of 2023: $53,760

Costco

Annual revenue for 2022 was $226.954 Billion, a 15.83% increase from 2021.

Value as of 2023: $18,924

Home Depot

Annual revenue for 2022 was $151.157 Billion, a 14.42% increase from 2021

Value as of 2023: $16,623

TD Bank

This used to be Commerce Bank. When Vernon Hill was CEO it outperformed Amazon

Value as of 2023: $5,859

Walmart

In 2000 when Lee Scott took over as CEO he dropped the focus on customer service. Customer service is no longer part of their culture.

Value as of 2023: $3,758

Southwest Airlines

They are still customer driven. The Christmas flight cancellations killed their brand.

Value as of 2023: $2,274

General Electric

After Jack Welch retired in September 2001 greed and wasteful spending took over.

Value as of 2023:$589

Dell

Micheal Dell retired twice. The first time his new CEO Kevin Rollins dropped their focus on customer service. Dell never recovered.

Value as of 2023: $500

JetBlue

When they kept passengers locked on the runway for 13 hours in 2007 with NO service recovery they lost their brand and reputation.

Value as of 2023: $467