No matter the brand, customer service needs to be a priority. Here’s how to make it a revenue source as well.
Contact centers are often seen as an expensive but necessary line item that should be streamlined as much as possible in support of the bottom line, but brands are waking up to the value of a great customer experience. For many, that value can be hard to quantify and communicate, especially in the face of the massive labor and technology costs associated with large contact centers. So, how do you turn a contact center that’s built around support and customer service into a revenue-generating machine?
Here’s how to get started.
Quantify Satisfaction to Impact Revenue
Most contact centers measure satisfaction using net promoter score (NPS) or customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, but struggle to directly attribute these metrics to revenue increases or churn reduction. First, deploy a digital care solution that consolidates multiple channels and customer touchpoints into a single conversation management platform. Then, integrate that platform with back-end systems like your CRM or ecommerce platform to track every interaction against a holistic customer profile. With that basic infrastructure in place, you can begin to correlate customer satisfaction to revenue.
Increase customer lifetime value
Segment your customer base into two groups: high scores and low scores. Compare those segments’ average annual or lifetime spend to find the exact dollar value a single point of CSAT or NPS represents to your business. A study from Harvard Business Review shows that a two- to three-point increase in these scores can correlate to a 30% increase in annual revenue per customer.
Increase brand loyalty and referral revenue
Brand loyalty can be difficult to measure beyond typical NPS scores and average customer spend, but referral business is an outcome of loyalty that can be easily tracked. Go deeper than just surveying your customer base and offer promotional campaigns for referral business. Then compare the referrers’ engagement history and relative CSAT scores.
Reduce customer churn
For brands with subscription models or frequent recurring purchases, high satisfaction has been closely correlated to lower cancellation and customer churn rates. There are plenty of loss-prevention tactics to engage in, like renewal reminders or high barriers to cancellation, but keeping customers satisfied is the cheaper, easier path to retention. McKinsey and Company observed that highly satisfied customers are three to four times less likely to churn, and that substantial increases to CSAT can result in an overall 10% to 15% churn reduction.
Decrease costs with AI-powered support
53% of customers don’t care whether they interact with a chatbot or a human, as long as their question gets answered. While AI advances like chatbots won’t fully replace skilled human agents in your contact center, they are highly effective at quickly resolving simple, common inquiries. This can mean lower long-term expenditure on contact centers. Plus, bots offer immediate responses, and faster response times are closely correlated to customers’ willingness to pay more for products or services.
Deliver More Than Support
Once you’ve quantified the benefits of your existing support operations, the next step is to offer higher quality sales and marketing experiences to customers using chat and messaging channels.
Increase customer lifetime value
Forrester reports that site visitors who engage in web chat are almost three times more likely to purchase than those who don’t. Improve sale conversion rates by equipping your agents with promotional response templates, knowledge base integrations, and rich content that showcases products.
Increase lead conversion rates
Brands with longer, more hands-on buying cycles and B2B brands that drive traffic to meetings or demos have seen significant lead conversion rate increases when engaging prospects via chat or messaging. Adding scheduling functionality or qualifying questions to the chat experience can speed up the sales cycle by removing unnecessary back-and-forth exchanges and redundant discovery meetings.
Increase average order value
By engaging in consultative sales and marketing conversations, your agents have the opportunity to assess customer needs and drive revenue. By using automated AI-based tagging or even manual tagging, brands can measure what channels and products are most likely to compel marketing conversations and what agent behaviors and content are most likely to convert sales.
Offer checkout experiences in messaging channels
Mobile channels like Google’s Business Messages or Apple Business Chat offer compelling in-conversation checkout experiences with their built-in Google Pay and Apple Pay wallet apps. Customers can now add services or buy an item they inquired about within the messaging channel—right at their point of highest interest and engagement.
If you’re interested in learning more about how digital-first contact centers increase satisfaction and revenue while decreasing costs, visit Khoros.com/care to check out the Khoros Care ROI whitepaper. Or run the numbers yourself with our ROI calculator to see how adopting Khoros Care could impact your brand’s bottom line.