It’s relatively easy to see how bad service affects revenue. When customers don’t get the support and care they are looking for, they have no qualms about taking their business elsewhere and leaving poor reviews. But while good customer service is a critical business practice, it’s much harder to see exactly how much a company’s efforts are paying off. Knowing the ROI of your customer service center is important to setting strategic business goals, but how do you even begin to calculate it?
Customer service centers are, traditionally, not considered profit centers. Knowing this, some businesses choose to neglect their customer service and can end up damaging their sales, while others invest resources into great service without strategy, simply because they believe it will pay off. Like any business investment, however, having a quality customer service center requires planning and careful consideration. If you're thinking about investing more into your call center, like upgrading communications technology or your phone system, it's critical to know its current ROI.
There are two figures you need to calculate call center ROI, and one is easier to find that the other:
How much you’re investing shouldn’t be too hard to find or calculate, but be sure to include everything in the service center that costs money. Employee wages and benefits, technology, furniture, office space, and more could be included in this figure, depending on your business.
The real question is how to determine how much your customer service center brings in. While customer service representatives don't work with aquiring new customers, they do impact business revenue.
Finding the two numbers is, thankfully, the hard part. Then, simply subtract the money spent from the money gained, divide by money spent, and multiply that by 100 for your call center ROI. Armed with this knowledge, you can strategize on how to best utilize customer service in your company, like investing more into upgraded communication systems or more personel. Even though the revenue earned from a call center may not be as visible as it is from sales, quality customer service can provably boost your business.