In a series of research projects, Genesys Telecommunications concluded that poor customer service costs businesses
US$340 billion.They conducted a survey of 8,800 buyers across 16 countires. Finacial services ($44Bn), cable & TV service providers ($37Bn) and wireless & internet providers ($36Bn) were the most prominent losers in their studies.
Genesys reported that across all countries, each lost business opportunity amounted to on average $243 per customer.
Essentially customers are taking their business elsewhere, resulting in 63% of the losses, with abondoned transactions
accounting for the rest.
Most businesses continue to do things the same way they always have. We're not sure why. Two problem areas stand out from the research - one is, of course poorly designed customer interfaces, be it a call centre or a website. The other is for us, one of poor sales productivity is - a classic ‘broken systems’ problem.
John Cousineau, CEO of Innovative Information says that "Sales people are expected to discover the keys to being successful when they get hard proof of their Return-on-Sales-Effort only from the small percentage of customers who place orders. It’s feedback that only arrives at the end of typically months of effort. It’s a long time to wait to discover whether or not effort’s being wasted.
Sales people need to know what impacts, if any, their sales efforts are having. They need this feedback to be precise,
beyond question, and fast. They don’t want to make mistakes, and the especially don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over again."
So the choice is up to you - more of the same or we can start by improving the way we do business, the way customers want to do business. We submit a starting point is fixing your sales effort problem.
In sales, effort matters. Return-on-Sales-Effort matters more. Do you know yours?
Poor Customer Service Loses Billions
