Three ways customer service can become a growth driver
A boss once told me that my job as the customer service manager was to "cut costs and make more money."
My boss was the CFO, so it makes sense that he saw my role that way. Yet he struggled to explain exactly how I should achieve that objective. In reality, he treated the department as a cost center, which was an expense to be minimized.
I've learned a lot since then about how the customer service department can move from being a cost center to become a growth driver. Here are three examples.
Example 1: Recovery
Every customer you retain helps fuel growth.
Customers often contact the customer service department because something went wrong. That's when we're most vulnerable to losing their business.
It's not just the loss of their business that's painful. The company has to bring in two new customers for every customer lost to continue growing. That puts a lot of pressure on marketing and sales.
You can learn how to retain more customers with my ultimate guide to service recovery.
Tracking the financial impact of customer retention can help prove that your department is a growth driver. Listen to customer experience expert, Jeanne Bliss, explain how to do it:
Example 2: Quality
Let's go back to why customers reach out to customer service. It's usually because something went wrong. Examples include:
Those problems cost the company a lot of money. We know those failures often originate in product development and operations, but do they know that?
They often don't unless we tell them!
Customer service is uniquely positioned as a listening post. We can compile and share data about why customers contact us and help operations and product design improve quality.
Here are just a few real examples of opportunities identified by customer service teams:
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Example 3: Conversion
Customers often contact customer service when they have questions. They might want to know more about a service offering, the details of a product displayed on our website, or a new promotion.
In some cases, this can lead directly to a sale.
Here's an example of a simple chat interaction I had with Jennifer, an Osprey customer service rep who helped me choose the right backpack:
Jennifer must have ESP, because the Raptor 10 turned out to be the perfect pack for my needs. I'm really happy with it.
Can you track customer conversations that lead to sales?
I helped one client increase their conversion rate from 33 percent to 45 percent just by improving listening skills, asking better questions, and providing more accurate and timely product information.
A clothing company I worked with added $1 million in additional revenue by improving their customer service reps' product knowledge. This included giving reps access to product samples so they could touch and feel popular items.
Both cases added new revenue and proved the value of the customer service team.
Conclusion
It's up to us to take the initiative. The customer service team can be seen as a growth driver if we can prove we're making an impact in three key areas:
I recently joined customer service leaders from Zoom and Virgin Pulse to discuss this topic on a webinar hosted by Zendesk. You can watch the replay here.
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WSJ Best Selling author & founder of QCard, a platform designed to empower professionals to showcase their expertise, grow their reach, and lead their markets.
2 年The need to cut the budget is practically unnecessary if companies know how to leverage their customer service department to scale. CS could make or break a company's revenue, and it must be a priority to invest in training and providing the right resources and tools to support their service representatives.
Business Architecture │ Executive Development | Systemic Change Leadership │ Business Author │ Keynote Speaker │ Polymath │ Founder @ Anticipated Outcome │ Blogger @ RootCauseTheBook.com
2 年What is called "Customer Service" is more often than not experienced as prisoner abuse. You're lured in or they have eliminated competition and therefore its become put up or shut up. Have you heard of a company called AT&T to give you an example.
Musing on the intersection of leadership, life, and individuality | trainer, speaker, consultant, author | erstwhile fastest knitter in the U.S. | cat enthusiast
2 年The term "cost center" has always made me a bit cranky. *Every* area of a company, especially an area (such as customer service) that has direct contact with the customer has the potential to support the customer, support sales, support product or service growth, etc., etc. And your examples really prove the point for customer service. We need more examples like that for other cost centers!
Vice President of Customer Success @ WebSan Solutions Inc. | Commerce
2 年Outstanding customer service teams lead to many business benefits. Retention, Referrals, Employee satisfaction, GP growth and Longer term relationships.
Highly motivated and adaptable customer service professional. Adept at providing multilingual/multichannel support and managing customer escalations. Empathetic listener committed to enhancing customer experience.
2 年"the customer service department can move from being a cost center to become a growth driver"