Good Customer Service is over rated. Period.

If you want your business to excel, then don’t focus on customer service.

Years ago, I read a book “The Effortless Experience”. The key takeaway for me was that it’s largely pointless to focus on providing good customer service to your customers. The book gave example of a guy who spent 2 hours on phone, providing good service to a customer. However great that sounds, it’s not something businesses should encourage.

Because in today’s age, customers aren’t loyal. They’ll go to whichever provider gives them cheap or better product, forgetting when you went out of the way for them in past.

I went to Singapore in 2016 and visited Mustafa’s. Was shocked to see the level of customer service there, it was close to being non-existent. I talked to my known living there and she said that customer service over there is zero. Because they know that people will keep coming to them, as they won’t get such deals and variety elsewhere. Their focus is on providing things for cheap and not on pampering their customers.

If your end product does what it intends to, in a great manner, then customer service won’t matter that much.

I will give example of an Indian startup, who thought of revolutionising healthcare. They tied up with various doctors, to make patients get appointments from home, after choosing from a list of providers.

But, what happened eventually? Most doctors didn’t want to change their way of working. It didn’t matter to them that a patient feels uncomfortable waiting in their OPD for 3-4 hours. The patient can go somewhere else, if they feel another doctor will serve them better. And that’s what makes a doctor better than others. They won’t bother about hiring a soft spoken receptionist, reducing waiting times for patients, or giving instant access to emergency ones. A good doctor focuses on their practice and ensures that patient gets cured from the disease.

Coming to that Indian startup, they ended up burning their fingers, after working with most doctors. The established ones wouldn’t change their way of working. The ones who’re used to getting free gifts from Pharma companies, expected to get this software subscription also for free. Ultimately what happened was that the startup tied up with Pharma companies, who sponsored the software to doctors. The Pharma companies did that to gain access to patient data, and contact them directly to sell their medicines. But, most doctors didn’t use the software, because they got it for free.

Did it affect their practice? Not much, because the ones in need kept coming.

Did it affect the patients? No, because they preferred cure for their medical problems, over good customer service.

Key learning: Focus more on your product, and less on customer service.