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A customer service team can drive revenue rather than being a cost. Here’s how to work out whether yours is having a positive impact on the bottom line.
There are so many ways to measure your customer service team’s success – some more useful than others, and all with their advocates and naysayers. They include whether the team achieves first-call resolution, how long they spend on each customer interaction, results of surveys or ratings after phone calls … the list goes on.
We’ve talked before about the importance of measuring customer experience (CX) over call times, and a good measure of CX is the bottom line – people spend money with companies that make it easy.
This means that the best service teams are the ones that generate revenue – because they positively influence customer retention, cross-sell and upsell rates. Here are five ways you can track whether revenue is coming from your service efforts.
New customers are certainly important to the growth of a business, but keeping customers is just as important. It’s generally cheaper than finding new ones, and loyal customers are said to be worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. Even better – those customers who become advocates are worth even more. Basically, it’s a no-brainer that you want customers to stick around.
Retention rates are also a great indicator of what customer service is contributing to your revenue. If you see an increase in the customers who are sticking around, you know that your service team is boosting your bottom line.
On the other hand, if customers leave and never return without providing feedback, you might have some work to do on your service. And if you can work out why they left, and look for behavioural changes in the lead-up to them leaving, you can be on the lookout for these changes in other accounts as well.
People will only write great reviews, tell their friends, share your social media pages, and subscribe to your blog if part of your business is great customer service. You rarely see overwhelmingly great online reviews that do not, at least in part, discuss excellent customer service as a part of their experience.
But did you know that news of bad customer service reaches more ears than praise for a good service experience? If you notice that your brand’s online reputation is extremely positive and that it has been steadily improving over the course of time, you likely have customer service (rather than sales or marketing) to thank for it.
We know that customers are willing to spend more money with a company that provides good customer service. This means that when you do have excellent customer service, you have more wiggle room with your pricing. Once you know for sure that people are satisfied, you can experiment with your prices. This is a profit-generating move, which stems from the security that comes with customer service efforts.
Again, no one’s saying a stellar sales team isn’t vital. But CX from start to finish, both online and offline, will impact whether a potential customer will choose to follow through with the sale. This makes service absolutely key in converting potential customers to sales.
If you notice that conversion rates have been improving, and the time it takes to turn a lead into a customer is getting shorter, you (and your sales team) can thank those behind the customer’s service experience.
Good service creates positive word of mouth, good reviews and a strong reputation. It makes it easy for new customers to walk in your door or land on your website and want to complete a transaction. If you have noticed an increase in inbound leads, customer service is assisting this boost.
These are just a few of the signs your service team is contributing to an increase in your bottom line – they show the importance of great service, because the opposite of each point is also true. If your business is not growing, you need to help your service team improve.
There are plenty of ways to do this, but one easy one to start off with is encouraging your sales and customer service departments to work together and share information about what customers want and how your business can provide it.
To find out more about how your service team can help boost your bottom line, download our ebook Connect Sales and Service Around the Customer.
