Cost of multiple call-backs from customers

With each follow-up call made by a customer,
call-handling costs increase and customers become less satisfied

How much do multiple call-backs cost you?

The following calculator can be used to calculate the potential cost of multiple call-backs in your organisation and also help provide an estimate of one of the potential savings that can be achieved by implementing a customer experience measurement programme.

These savings are particularly relevant in situation involving complex and diverse resolution processes such as local government service requests and financial services complaints handling.

Step 1: Enter your data

 

Enter your company data, or use our example:		Operational data	Research data
	• Average number of requests per week		requests per week
	• Average cost of handling each customer contact	$	dollars
	• Average number of times that customers need to make contact    before their request is actioned			contacts

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Step 2: Calculate the excess call handling costs

  

Click on the “calculate” button:
	• Annual excess costs from handling multiple call-backs		per year

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Research also shows a significant drop in customer satisfaction and advocacy each time a customer needs to call back.

What you could gain

Internal methods of measuring “First Contact Resolution” (FCR) can fail to identify when a customer’s issue is not completely resolved, or how often they need to call back before final action is taken.

By closing the loop with customers after their requests have been actioned, organisations can identify incidents of poor performance and identify failures in processes that contribute to customer expectations not being met and multiple call-backs being needed.

Step 3: Reduce the need for customers to make multiple call-backs

The following calculator considers the potential benefits from reducing the need for customer call-backs by closing the loop with customer to ensure their requests and issues have been addressed:

Close the loop with customers:		Identify reasons for multiple call-backs:		Take remedial actions to reduce those needs:		Monitor the savings from reduced call-backs:
Track your customers' experience with the service request process:		Identify where and why customers need to call more than once:		Reduce the number of call-backs that customers need to make:		Potential annual cost-savings from reduced call volumes:
A systematic programme to close the loop and track customer experience with service requests can help identify where and why customers need to call more than once.		The tracking programme can function as an operational management tool to help fine tune customer expectations, service levels and process performance - reducing the need for call-backs.		If this helped you reduce the number of customer call-backs by    % it would reduce the average number of calls per customer request to...		This would provide potential annual savings from reduced call volumes of...
Estimate the improvement you might achieve, replace the value in the yellow box, and then...				calls per request		per year

This is an indication of what your company stands to gain by reducing the need for multiple call-backs.

Step 4: Consider other direct benefits from reducing the need for multiple customer call-backs

• Improved contact centre capacity
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Increase in sales to existing customers through improved customer loyalty
• Increase in sales to new customer through improved advocacy and referrals

 

For more information about improving customer satisfaction and reducing the costs from poor service, please take a look at our collection of case studies and working papers.