53%

American industrialist and automobile pioneer Henry Ford is famous for a lot of things including some pretty overused quotations (i.e., “you can have it in any color…”) but the quip below is probably my personal favorite as it truly gets to the spirit of what it means to serve one’s customers: “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.”  

First of all, if more companies (and at least a handful of local, state, and federal government agencies) behaved as if they believed this mantra the world would be a happier place.  Secondly and perhaps of more concern to many CEOs, a failure to embrace this type of approach can be extremely costly.  According to a recent infographic produced by Zendesk (below), the more frequently a retail consumer shops online the more importance they place on customer service.  In fact, while 40% of customers who shop online every four to six months say customer service is extremely or very important, the number jumps to 53% for those individuals who shop online more than once a month.

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• 2011 YouTube rewind (marshallstanton.com)
• Facebook for Android (marshallstanton.com)