One metric that “rules them all”

In the service side of CRM, there is one metric that “rules them all”. It is “Cost per call”. I have been fortunate to see how many companies and industries approach this number. In this current economy, it may make sense to take a focused, tactical approach to continually improve the cost per call number.

In the enterprise space the overall volumes are small by comparison, but the call is difficultly complex. It is not unusual to see cost per call in the hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per call. Automation of processes and continual refinement works well in this environment. There are 2 approaches that I have seen work. First, automate your internal processes so that you can pull everything you know about your customer into a single view for your CSR. Second, is to create content (static or dynamic) that will assist the customer while deflecting the call. Guess which is easier to implement? I would recommend tackling the first approach, realize some ROI and then improve the ROI by tackling the second approach.

In the consumer space, the overall volumes are high by comparison but the call is typically easy to resolve. The cost per call number is typically under ten dollars per call. Most of the time it is under three. There seems to be a preoccupation in this space with removing a CSR from actually talking to customer. When a CSR does need to get involved, the approach is to not have to ask the basic questions, e.g., Operating Systems, version information, etc. The approach of content (static or dynamic) creation that will assist the customer while deflecting the call does work in the scenario. The real trick is to get the right content and have it ready when necessary. So to those in the consumer space, I would suggest to know why your customers contact you and how to fix it before taking on a content creation project.

At the end of the day, any project to reduce cost per call needs to be able to deliver.