Great customer support is more or less the holy grail of most businesses. Considering business is a system of companies doing their best to satisfy customers through good policy, good services rendered and good handling of problems, customer support is pretty much the core of a business interaction. If customer support isn’t solid, then there is no foundation to build on, and it’s going to be a bad time for all involved.
So, you want great customer support, but at the same time, you may be on a budget, be it resource or monetary, or even perhaps both. As a result, you have to work extra hard to justify the costs of improving your customer support in the eyes of your superiors and in that of accounting.
These people expect a clear and present ROI for anything costing resources, and unfortunately, ROI is really hard to calculate when it comes to measures to alter or improve customer support. So, this is one case where there’s no real way to forecast a reliable ROI to win over the money changers. So, what can you do?
Well, provide the next best thing to an ROI projection, which is a list of proven and calculable benefits of improving customer service. This kind if is an ROI, though not a concrete one as they normally expect. However, if you can present your existing problems, actions needing taken and these four benefits, you should in most cases get the blessing from above to do what needs done.
#1 – Greater First Call Resolution
With improved customer support, call centers will see increased first call resolutions in customer support. The benefits of this are pretty obvious. When customers have to spend less time on the phone, and their issues are resolved with one call, this will reflect positively on your business.
This is especially important if their call was a result of a screw up on your company’s behalf. Redemption is as simple as making resolution quick and convenient in most cases. Improving customer service is partially fixing this issue.
#2 – Reduced Overhead
Customer support is a large generator of significant overhead. Call centers are costly, support staff are costly, and analysis is costly as well. As a result, the more tied up and inefficient the customer support model is, the more overhead it’s going to inflict.
Therefore, improving customer service is a great way to reduce overhead while making the division more effective and efficient at the same time.
#3 – Stronger Relationships
Great customer support will encourage an evolving and improving relationship between you and your customers. A friendship and a level of trust and loyalty will be cultivated with this mentality, ensuring a stronger bond and greater equity on both ends of the equation.
Strong relationships are tricky to forge in business, so when you are able, you should always do what you can to cultivate them.
#4 – Modernity and Reputation
Great customer support is often partly accomplished in modern times by adopting new technologies and models that take advantage of modern technology. Not only do these greatly contribute to more effective customer service and support, but they also give a company a good reputation.
Companies like this will appear to be on top of customer support, and show some level of dedication to it. They will also be seen as cutting edge and willing to take the risks and do the work to take full advantage of new possibilities.
If this isn’t enough to convince the bean counters of great customer support being worth the expenses, then they’re the ones not very good at their jobs.
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