3 Ways to Cut Your Customer Service Costs

In the business world of today, companies battle with each other to gain and retain customers for certain goods and services. While gaining customers is very important, retaining customers can easily be forgotten. One of the best ways to ensure that customers will come back is by customer service. Although customer service can be costly and time consuming, here are three ways these costs can be reduced.

Simplify Company Statements and Procedures

While policies and wording is important, it can get lost in translation to the customer or company employee. Policies can easily be pushed down the cooperate ladder to the employees who deal with customer service each day, but it can be challenging for them and for customers to understand what the policies actually mean. Sometimes, it is best to streamline various policies concerning customer service. Perhaps it would be best to have a policy that even a child of the age of 10 would understand. While this can seem insulting to some executives, the reality is that people like simplicity. They want to know in plain language what the company has in terms of a return policy, a complaint department, the mission statement of the company and so forth. When this information is there and understandable, a customer service agent can direct consumers and businesses to the company statements and procedures. In addition to this, the information can be posted on the Internet for everyone to see. This information can provide customers with the answers they need without ever having to contact the company. Since people already understand the policies of the company, they can immediately present their problem to the customer service agent. In turn, the agent can provide additional help and assistance in that realm.

Freedom to Customer Service Agents

At times, there are unique problems and concerns that are brought up by customers. If the problem is difficult and is dealt with on the phone, the consumer is put on hold and transferred to a supervisor. This standard procedure creates two problems. First, it demonstrates that the customer service agent truly did not have any power, since the call had to be transferred. Second, it takes the time of the consumer, agent and supervisor. A great way to handle this type of situation is to give freedom and power to customer service agents. This makes the agent responsible for making things right for the customer. Most likely, they know what can be done, but are not able to do it. Giving them freedom to make decisions will provide the power they need to be effective. More importantly, it makes things right for the customer, who has spent time trying to have a problem addressed. Furthermore, this freedom shortens the amount of company time that two people spend trying to address one problem. Freedom can create time and save money.

Listen to Others

One of the biggest gripes that employees have is that their company does not listen to them or their ideas. This can especially be true of customer service agents. These individuals know company policies, and they know about the problems consumers have with company products. Employees can provide excellent feedback concerning how to address customer service needs. Besides this, there are companies that specialize in creating efficiency and better customer service within a company. A company like this can help a business with how information is gathered and used within the realm of customer service. There are programs like knowledge management software that can certainly help in this process. When a company listens to others, beneficial changes can be made to improve customer service and cut out unnecessary policies that can eat up payroll and work time.

Self Service

One of the fast growing ways to cut costs with customer service are self-service automation and web based customer service. Companies like Amazon, Easyjet, and most financial institutions have moved to a self-service system and continue to grow sales. Yes, this form of customer service gets a bad name. However, when done correctly with the right system, self service can increase customer satisfaction and reduce spending. Knowledge management solutions provider KPS reports that self-service has the potential of an 80% reduction in call centre traffic. The report also states, “Recent estimates of external customer support through call centres can be as high as £15 to £30 [roughly $25-$33 USD] per call while web-chat may be £2 to £3 [~$3-$5 USD] per interaction.” That kind of spending reduction makes a significant difference in your overall customer service budget which can be then be redistributed to other areas of the department that need more attention like attracting quality candidates with higher salaries or improving customer service training.

The focus is to provide excellent customer service to customers. When these three ways are implemented, companies can save money and time. The result is that customers feel happy and customer service agents are empowered to be more effective.

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