customer service is crucial to repeat
Business and profitability
stunningly fundamental property of
polyhedrons. They never came to the
punch line because they never perceived
that a three-dimensional polyhedron is
composed of zero-dimensional vertices,
one-dimensional edges, and two-dimensional faces. By making this simple
observation, the rest fell into place for
Euler and his successors.
Euler went on to turn other questions
(such as the famous Königsberg problem: In a city of seven bridges, three river
banks, and one island, is it possible to walk
over all seven bridges once and only once?)
into vertex-edge abstractions. This led to
the entire field of graph theory, also known
as the study of networks and nodes.
Richeson takes us on a tour of ever
more complex and unique shapes and
the generalization of their properties,
culminating with the Poincaré Conjecture, which was solved in 2006 and
which has implications for the shape
and structure of the universe itself.
Although Richeson probably didn’t
mean to, his title perfectly encapsulates
for me the entire contents of topology.
A gem is a unique, beautiful object; but
it’s also cold and sterile. How sad that
the 20-faced dodecahedron is the final
perfect solid. A builder with infinite
materials, infinite space, infinite time,
and an infinite budget cannot outdo a
precocious 9-year-old with scissors and
construction paper. How disconcerting to realize that most complex objects
distill themselves down to a few generalized groupings, groupings that are then
constrained in their behavior by simple
characteristics.
After reading his book, I am grateful
to Richeson for showing both the beauty and the vacuity of this strange branch
of knowledge, even if the latter was
unintended.
pAul conlin is a fellow of the society
of actuaries and an actuary with aetna
in hartford, conn.
a maJorit Y of americans report that quality customer ser-
vice is more important to them in today’s economic environment
( 61 percent) and will spend an average of 9 percent more when they
believe a company provides excellent service. however, in a chal-
lenging economy where growth is harder to achieve, many busi-
nesses are missing out on this opportunity. although only a little
more than a third of americans ( 37 percent) believe that companies
have increased their focus on providing quality service:
■
27 percent feel businesses have not changed their attitude toward customer
service.
■
28 percent say that companies are now paying less attention to good service.
These findings are from the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a survey conducted in the U.S. and 11 other countries exploring attitudes
and preferences toward customer service.
Nine in 10 Americans (91 percent) consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company. But only one-quarter ( 24
percent) believe companies value their business and will go the extra mile to keep
it. Most feel businesses can do more to retain their loyalty:
■
48 percent feel companies are helpful but don’t do anything extra to keep their
business.
■ Worse, 21 percent believe that companies take their business for granted.
good news Travels Fast—Except Online
Importantly, customers are spreading the word willingly and widely when they
experience good service. In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, customers are
more inclined to talk about a positive experience than complain about a negative
one. Three-quarters ( 75 percent) are very likely to speak positively about a company
after a good service experience, in contrast with 59 percent who are very likely to
speak negatively about a company after poor service.
Good service experiences also carry more weight than bad ones when Americans make future spending decisions. Consumers are far more likely to give a
company repeat business after a good service experience ( 81 percent) than they
are to never do business with a company again after a poor experience
( 52 percent).
Consumers say the three most influential factors when
deciding which companies they do business with include
personal experience (98 percent), a company’s reputation or brand (92 percent), and recommendations from
friends and family ( 88 percent).
Nearly half ( 48 percent) of consumers report always or often reading online postings or blogs
to get others’ opinions about a company’s
customer service reputation. But when consumers go online they put greater credence
in negative reviews than on positive ones ( 57
percent and 48 percent, respectively).
