Hidden Wastes - Unveiling Hidden Losses in Your Customer Service Team

Is my customer service spending appropriate?

Am I spending too much?

Am I spending too little?

Honestly, that's a question that needs to asked on a regular basis. When a company is starting out and looking at a customer service team to hire, or building there own, price is a big component of the decision.

Most small businesses don't look at that budget again.

It becomes the price of doing business.

There are two sides to this coin:

1. You could be spending too much of your valuable resources on Customer Service, or

2. You could not be spending enough and your team is getting overwhelmed.

Either way, you need to take a regular look at your customer service needs.

I consulted this company once who had their customer service team coasting along.

They hadn't checked it in over 3 years.

They were starting to hurt for money and they had cut back on everybody that they could think of.

They hired me to do an efficiency evaluation on their team and this is what I found.

1. Their team had 4 people doing what 3 could do.

2. They were not maximizing the phone program that they were paying for.

3. They were paying somebody for doing absolutely nothing.

These three things were things that I suggested that they fix.

This ended up saving them over $4,500 a month or $54,000 a year.

When you know what you are looking for, you will find that many companies are overpaying simply because they aren't being efficient with the customer service resources that they had.

Let's look at the other side of the coin, Am I not paying enough for customer service.

I was talking to this lawyer from Philadelphia in a networking event.

He was complaining to me that his customer outreach team wasn't bringing in any clients.

After doing a little digging, he was an estate lawyer, which means that he deals with people creating wills and handling end of life affairs.

He outsourced his team from India.

The reason why his team wasn't bringing in any clients was because they couldn't understand them.

Most of his clients were over 50 and because of that they had a much harder time understanding accents.

He had a great idea, which was to bring people on board to touch potential clients, but because he chose to hire outside of North America it wasn't as effective as he had hoped.

He didn't pay enough for his team.

Both of these are important things to look at when you are evaluating your teams.

If you think that you are spending too much on your customer service team, book a meeting with me.

I run efficiency evaluation and consultations on your teams and can tell you weak points in your team, where you can save money without sacrificing quality, and how your team is performing compared to teams outside your company.