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Identifying Why Customers Love You or Leave You, Via Your “Customer Service Rating (CSI)” … It Drives Your Selling Focus and All Efforts!

Many selling organizations feel that they have customers in large part because of the great service they offer and or the exclusive product/service within a market that they represent. Many times, this may be true, but a sales professionals’ understanding of how their organization measures up on an objective Customer Service Index™ (CSI) in the consumers perspective, may reveal why a customer truly does business with them and why that same customer may leave.

Recognize that building customer loyalty today is an extremely difficult task. Just providing a customer with “Excellent” customer care alone may actually be the impetus for causing a customer to leave. To ensure that a customer gained is a customer maintained, sales professionals and internal customer care agents must continuously strive to provide “Exceptional” customer care. Don’t over kill the analytics of your CSI, just understand the simplicity, the secret is in the simplicity, and that understanding will allow you to see how you get, gain, grow or lose customers.

Consider the following CSI, customers measure your deliverables on two basic variables. On a scale of low to high, based upon where these two variables measure, dictates how the prospects/customers buying or repeat buying decision take place and directly influence a buyers’ loyalty.

Here is how the CSI impacts your ability to make a sale, increase selling frequency, impacts COI development, generate referrals or create analytics that will aid you in forecast analysis for market trends.

Start by using the CSI diagram, measure how a customer might rate the actual product or service being purchased on the vertical axis, from low at the bottom to progressively better the higher up the scale the feedback reveals (maybe a scale of 0-4.9 low scores and 5-10 high scores). Then, measure the way the people associated with that transaction, handled that encounter (maybe a scale of 0-4.9 low scores and 5-10 high scores).

To label the four differing quadrants and understand how some of the traditional labels for customer care may actually be very deceiving and thus lead to maybe a sale or win now, and massive lost business tomorrow, consider:

  • A CSI score in the bottom left quadrant would be labeled “POOR” customer care and would obviously lead to lost business. This indicates that the brand promise made was not met in the actual deliverable and the interaction with the people aspects failed to meet customer expectations as well.
  • A score in the bottom right quadrant would be labeled “Excellent” customer care. Although the product or service they are buying, receiving or affiliating with didn’t meet or exceed their expectations, sometimes it is the sales professional that maintains the business and in essence carries the organization. This really indicates more or an affinity to the CSR/People in the interaction and thus the relationship is more based upon the serving person/CSR/Agent than the company or business deliverables. This is a dangerous relationship transaction to find yourself in, as the client is loyal to the person and not the deliverable or organization. The person/representatives leave your selling organization and so too can the customer. So always recognize when the customer says anything positive, like you do an “excellent” job, this may be very misleading!
  • A score in the top left quadrant would be labeled “Excellent” customer care also. Again, a very misleading label, and the sales professionals understanding must be understood that business is taking place here in large part because of product loyalty/brand loyalty and not because the sales professional is delivering great care. This too can lead to future lost business. Here the brand or deliverable is carrying the transaction and thus covering for people inflictions. So always recognize when the customer says anything positive, like you do an “excellent” job, this may be very misleading!
  • The ultimate goal of every sells professional is to have a CSI score in the top right quadrant. This is when the product/service/deliverable and the sales professional/people touch-points both exceeded the customers’ expectations (a minimum score on both CSO axis lines of 5.1) and is labeled, “Exceptional” customer care!

From an organizational stand point as a sales professional, you must recognize that customers doing business with you that score in bottom right quadrant, leave your bottom line statistics when their relationship with a sells professional leaves. The same is true for top left quadrant business, as soon as another vendor enters your market with an equal; product/service the customers will leave in droves – as they are frustrated with giving their money and business to an organization whereby they feel the sales professionals and customer service representatives don’t appreciate them.

A sells professional, you must always strive for business transactions to be top right quadrant activities. Here is where you will find advocates to you and your organization, a culture of inclusiveness and excited customers, and an energy that feeds your selling pipeline/funnel for a healthy today and tomorrow. Again, top right quadrant indicators reveal, this is where the customer (or if you are recruiting people to your organization) feels appreciated, valued, involved, their personal needs are being met and even challenged to greater trajectory levels of greatness (that means high horizontal axis scores), and that the tangible reasons they came to you, that the deliverables are doing as advertised and are being delivered and met (high vertical axis scores).

A great way to always be challenging yourself for higher vertical and horizontal axis scores, people are moved to align, buy, join, stay and engage when their needs are being met or exceeded. There are four ways you can litmas test if you are stagnant or excelling, people want in their decisions to be gaining:

  • Better than what others are receiving or what they received last time …
  • Faster or more efficient ways to do what they do or in what they align themselves with or purchase …
  • Different ways to standout in what they do or align with, typically people do not want to be just like everyone else …
  • Cost-Effective, in what we do, align or purchase people want great value propositions in what they receive, not always the greatest bang for their buck, but a smart bang …

Again, many selling organizations feel that they have customers in large part because of the great service they offer and or the exclusive product/service within a market that they represent. Many times, this may be true, but a sales professionals’ understanding of how their organization measures up on an objective Customer Service Index™ (CSI) in the consumers perspective, may reveal why a customer truly does business with them and why that same customer may leave.

Always strive to have and leave every client interaction in top right quadrant!




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