At any point in time, 11.4% of your revenue is at risk, according an extensive study conducted with North American companies over an 8-year period by Hepworth & Company Ltd. The number of dissatisfied customers you have ranges from 4% to 33%. So...if you're a $10M company, you're at risk of losing $1.1M of revenue. Can you afford it?  

This month's newsletter is guaranteed to get you thinking about your customers and your revenue. First Harvard University shares some important lessons. Then Ruth-Anne compares an average customer experience with an exceptional one. Finally, our colleague, Jack Aaronson, asks if you're sharing customer complaint information with the right people.

Helping you keep your brand promises,

In 1999, Harvard's endowment was $14.4 billion. In one amazing year, Harvard University's wealth jumped nearly a third. What's fascinating is that the $4.8 billion dollar increase alone was larger than the total endowments reported last year by some other top universities. So what is Harvard doing that you aren't? You're only one click away from finding out.

Editor's note: You may need to register to read this article but it's well worth the extra few seconds of your time.

Is good customer service dead? I don't know. You tell me. How have your experiences been lately? If I asked you to tell me about a great experience you've had, chances are you'd have difficulty remembering one. But if I asked you to tell me about a bad experience you could probably share half a dozen stories. What does an exceptional customer experience look like? Read on to find out.

Most major online companies have installed customer service (CRM) software. Turnaround times are slowly decreasing. And automated systems allow simple questions to be answered automatically. The problem is that customer complaints are not getting to the right people at the company so they can build products and services differently. Who should the customer complaints information be going to?

This Month's Poll Thinking about your retail experiences, do you believe that customer service in general has gotten better, stayed about the same, or gotten worse over the past five years? Better Same Worse Results