What is the Biggest Cost to a Company?

What is the biggest cost to a company?

Robbie Richards writes for JitBit, a company that provides live chat and helpdesk software to help businesses simplify and improve their customer support.  He provided a great piece on every company’s biggest expense.  Ask a business owner or CEO that question and you’ll get answers like: R&D, payroll, and advertising.  And, while all are very important to growing a successful business and come with significant costs…they are not the costliest.  The truth is, the biggest cost to your business doesn’t actually show up as a line item on any balance sheet or expense report. Any company’s biggest expenses is poor Customer service.

What is the cost of poor Customer Service?

It causes 89% of consumers to stop doing business with a company, and costs US businesses a whopping $84B a year. Bad customer service is the fastest way to lose existing customers, and repel potential customers from ever stepping foot in your door, or clicking through to your website. Despite its bottom line impact, many businesses fail to make great customer service a #1 priority. More attention and resources are given to customer acquisition, while retention is treated as an after thought. As you will see, this is a BIG mistake. The team at JitBit has put together the infographic that explores the major financial implications of bad service, shows which segment of your customer base is least tolerant of a poor experience, explains why almost 50% of your customers might jump ship to the competition, and highlights how a minor improvement in a company’s customer support can generate a profit increase of 25%-95%.

***IN CASE YOU MISSED THE TOP 10 #CUSTSERV ARTICLES OF 2015

Ask Anything, Anytime, Anywhere

In May 2015, Marriott Hotels launched a mobile request messaging feature that was specifically designed to enable guests to make requests for services and amenities from the Marriott app. The “Ask Anything, Anytime, Anywhere” feature offers two-way messaging so guests can chat and make requests, no matter what time or where they are. This innovative, yet common sense feature provides both the guest and the hotel the opportunity to further deepen their relationship, which promotes loyalty, revenue and goodwill. The added bonus? Because this conversation takes place within the app, and not over the phone, there is an auditable record of what requests were made so that the hotel can further personalize their services in the future.

Two completely different approaches to handling Customer complaints

In his new bestselling book, Hug Your Haters, Jay Baer shares an entertaining story of how two authors addressed poor online reviews. Author Dave Kerpen personally responds to every one-star review of his books on Amazon. He apologizes and offers to refund money spent. Pretty impressive! However, this is in stark contrast to how British author, Richard Brittain, handled a highly critical, one-star review on Amazon of his book, The World Rose.  Brittain traveled five hundred miles, tracked down teenage reviewer Paige Rolland, and smashed her in the head with a wine bottle at the supermarket where she works, knocking her unconscious. Fortunately I haven’t received any one-star reviews yet, but I am pretty sure I won’t be using Brittain’s approach.

Are you a Customer Experience Executive? Watch Video.

The CXE Academy provides comprehensive training and certification on all facets and responsibilities that fall under the Customer experience, while sharing best practices through high impact exchanges with like-minded professionals. As a student at The CXE Academy you will develop your ability to design and implement significant business change that impacts the customer service delivered by your organization.  Limited seats, by application only.