Why you should spend ￡30,000 answering a single customer enquiry. ? ??
Hugo Pickford-Wardle
Product Leader | Building Great Products | Building Great Teams | AI/ML | Data | Social Value
What is answering a single customer enquiry 'Properly'?
When a customer calls you it will likely cost ￡4. I think you should actually spend ￡40,000 to properly answer that customer’s query.
In our work we get to see extensive data on callcentre volumes from companies across a wide range of industries. From this data there are a number of trends that become strongly visible. two of the most interesting are:
- People call up repeatedly because their phone call didn’t solve their problem.
- Multiple people call up about the same problem because the company didn’t solve the underlying issue.
This happens in callcentres based in the UK, those based overseas, and those with operations both in the UK and overseas.
This happens in callcentres that are enormous and callcentres that still have a tight-knit team vibe.
This is also a huge operational cost.
People call up repeatedly
Those ￡4 phone calls suddenly become a string of ￡4 calls. ￡4 easily becomes ￡40. Wrap codes often hide this data, either because agents using wrong code (often because the code has an ambiguous name) or the code covers such a range of issues that the actual volumes associated with a customer problem are lost without alternative research.
By listening to customer calls directly we find that these types of calls are usually generated by a broken process. Often that process is one where the customer will need to wait to confirm resolution has actually occured (Changing address details is a classic example).
When we analyse the call volume data using a level of analysis deeper than wrap codes we find that these ‘Failure demand’ customer problems also drive a high percentage of call volumes.
Of course, as well as causing an issue of failure demand, it is these issues that impact customer relationships. These are the interactions shared in the pub. Repeatedly.
Multiple people call up
The problem is that you can’t remove these calls by simply providing an answer to the customer. You need a new customer journey that doesn’t cause the problem in the first place. You need a change.
To create a customer journey that eliminates calls before they are made, you need to have a deep understanding of the customer issue. Good news! That’s in your call data. You also need to make a change to your process. Here's the kicker - This, is substantially more difficult.
Whether you have a continuous improvement team or a digital transformation team, there are no doubt people in your organisation trying to make improvements. One of the biggest challenges these people face is unlocking the money to make these fixes, closely followed by the challenge of getting a group of people from across the organisation to work together on making the change you need.
Unlocking the fix
By framing the improvement about answering a single customer enquiry you provide the focus, data and measurability to create a compelling business case that can easily unlock ￡40,000 of capital expenditure. Finance departments love business cases that are based on real numbers, that can demonstrate a good return of investment and if the impact can be measured then you’re on to a real winner.
Because you are focused on solving a single customer enquiry “How can I book my wedding venue online when it’s 18 months in the future?” rather than trying to reduce “Wedding” calls coming into the callcentre it is much easier for everyone across the organisation to get with the programme.
Our experience shows that these types of improvement have an in year return on investment of at least 200% on a capital expenditure of ￡40,000. Those are numbers any finance manager is going to support. So go ahead and solve one customer enquiry ‘properly’.
Hugo Pickford-Wardle is Chief Innovation Officer at Matter where he helps organisations deal with complexity so their customer's don't have to.
You can also find him on Twitter as @hugopw
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Utility companies are particularly bad at this worldwide. No idea how to x-channel classify and deal with the basics of a suggestion vs an equiry vs a complaint.