Are The ‘Nice’ Customers Ruining Your Business?

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Most business owners have a puzzled look on their faces whenever I throw this question at them. They wonder how Nice customers can possibly ruin their business until I break it down.
But first things first, you need to understand that there are Nice customers and there are the ‘Nice’ customers

Who is the ‘Nice’ Customer?

According to business author Michael LeBoeuf, the ‘Nice’ customer, is one who never complains no matter what type of Service he/she gets.

Who wouldn’t love such Customers? (I would have loved them a year ago).But when you realize that these nice customers are usually the ones who –

  • Never pointed out to you where you failed to leave up to their expectations
  • Never pointed where you could have improved on your services
  • Simply stopped showing up after they received better experience from your competitors

Then you begin to see ‘Nice’ customers in a new light.

Customers morph to ‘Nice’ customers usually because a firm doesn’t encourage Customer complaints. This can happen when the business fails to effectively resolve previous complaints or treats the complaining customer shabbily.

 

As time goes by Customers won’t see the essence of complaining they think –

“Why bother complaining? It’s not like it’s going to help”

This is especially common in monopolist markets or SME businesses which are yet to become customer focused and also in poorly managed government parastatals.

But the truth is when you have mostly ‘Nice’ Customers patronizing your business –

#1. There will be little or no improvement in your Services

You’ll never know what it is you’re doing wrong or areas where you could improve on (feedback), simply because nobody is pointing it out to you or you’re simply not listening. This eventually degenerates to complacency.

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#2. Competition would eventually render you irrelevant

A great percentage of the time, ‘nice’ Customers will simply stop doing business with you once they get a better service quality elsewhere. (One day you realize, the Customers have stopped coming!)

#3. You’ll never understand your Customers and their NEEDS

When Customers don’t complain (or stop complaining), you risk missing out on the general expectations of the Customers from your business, this way you’d have an uphill task of maintaining Customer loyalty (especially when competition shows up, down the street).

#4. You’ll miss out on Competitive intelligence

It’s usually complaining Customers who point out what competition is doing or how they’re doing it. Something like;

“At XYZ, it takes only 2 days for them to…”

#5. You’ll miss out on valuable business insights

From a Customer complaint, you can have a great idea that could lead to a new service or a new business, a complaint like;

“Why does this take too long to get to me?”

Could give you the idea of starting an express delivery service, and which could be profitable & also lead to improved Customer perception.

There you have it, If you are a business owner and you haven’t gotten a single Customer complaint in a long time, ask yourself – is this because my services are the best? Or because I have a lot of ‘Nice’ Customers? Every business owner needs to know Why The Complaining Customer Should Be Valued. 

Kelechi Okeke
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