Complaints About Customer Service Are Costing You a Lot More Than Just Unhappy Customers

The customer service experience is a great predictor for organizational and sales success. How your employees (internal customers) handle your actual clients (external customers) will either make your day exceptional or a sales nightmare.

Many small businesses to mid size firms receive complaints from their clients or patrons. For discussion sake, let us presume that one department within one such business receives three complaints per week about how sales were not handled efficiently or effectively. Initially, three does not sound like that much, however the executive believes that this is too much and looks for some customer service training.

He talks with two different vendors and receives two different proposals on customer service training. The first one is for a one day 6 hour nationally recognized public workshop at $150 per employee. Proposal number two is from a local consultant for 12 hours over the course of 3.5 months for $300 per employee. The consultant explains people remember 2% after 16 days and that your employees need numerous opportunities for practice and feedback if you want to achieve the desired results of less complaints and more happy customers. Sales Coaching Tip: Most customer service training to sales training delivers a negative return on investment

Now as he is pondering this decision, he receives another complaint about this department. After listening to the complaining customer for over 15 minutes, he then thinks about what course of action to take. Fifteen minutes later, he calls the department head and they engage in a 30 minute conversation about this ongoing customer service sales problem. Next the department head gathers her notes, prepares an agenda and calls for a 30-minute meeting of her department. The collective time wasted on this one complaint easily exceeded 2 hours.

Complaints cost productivity time and negatively affect the goal to increase sales. For this business, the weekly hit to productivity is 6 hours. Using an average wage and benefit hourly wage of $50, these complaints are costing the bottom line over $15,000 annually. Just imagine, how much sales must be generated to overcome this drain on the bottom line. Sales Coaching Tip: If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.

Returning to the executive, he is at the fork in the road of delivering exceptional customer service. He can pay the lesser amount and take the quick fix hit or he can truly invest in his people.

Sales Coaching Tip: Look at the forks in your road. Make sure that your decisions are not just based on the cheapest, quickest solution, but are aligned to your overall strategic business goal driven action plan and directed to the sustainable results. Take the time to truly understand the partial to full impact of the challenges facing your customers both externally and internally if you really want to increase sales.

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Complaints About Customer Service Are Costing You a Lot More Than Just Unhappy Customers