Google the phrase "What is the return on investment on customer service?" and you get sent to the Institute of Customer Service Website and their report,
"return on investment in customer service: the bottom line report" from which I will quote later.
Their research examines:- which customer service activities bring the best returns,
- how to go about measuring customer intangibles and
- how to achieve an ROI from customer service.
My point!
This report is a real starting point recognising the need to attribute ROI to customer service activities. While most measures of success are soft or qualitative, there is a growing need to demonstrate the relationship between excellent customer service and the ensuing bottom line benefits.
Quite how you measure this is another matter!
Key findings
"The research found that organisations believe that there is a link between investing in service and achieving some form of ROI. More often than not it's investment in more complex, harder to define activities such as empowering staff and gaining an understanding of the customer viewpoint that bring the best returns, rather than ‘harder’, cost cutting activities such as moving the contact centre off–shore.
Similarly, the research concludes that some harder to measure goals — such as establishing trust, loyalty and some form of emotional connection with customers — bring the highest returns.
"The research found that organisations believe that there is a link between investing in service and achieving some form of ROI. More often than not it's investment in more complex, harder to define activities such as empowering staff and gaining an understanding of the customer viewpoint that bring the best returns, rather than ‘harder’, cost cutting activities such as moving the contact centre off–shore.
Similarly, the research concludes that some harder to measure goals — such as establishing trust, loyalty and some form of emotional connection with customers — bring the highest returns.
- 81% of respondents believe that gaining an understanding from a customer viewpoint is very likely to lead to an ROI in customer service
- More complex people-driven concepts such as ‘culture of service quality’ and the ‘whole customer experience’ are expected to be much more important in the future
- 47.3% of respondents say off-shoring/outsourcing is unlikely to lead to ROI in customer service
- interaction between frontline staff and customers is a key activity leading to ROI
- right staff with the right ‘inborn’ attitude to customer service is a major contributor
- empowering staff to make decisions delivers increased value for both customers and the organisation
- customer satisfaction is easy to measure and the dominant metric among service providers
- customer service is beginning to play an increasingly strategic role in organisations"
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