Poor Call Handling Results in Lost Sales Opportunities

Lost calls equate to lost business, which equates to lost profitability – and that’s just on the sales side. But do you really know how much business you are losing when you miss out on calls?

What about on the customer service side? It’s easy to equate one lost sales call with 1 lost sale which equates to the lost profit of £X/sale. But what about the lost repeat business, upgrades and opportunities to sell additional products and services. It’s actually your average customer lifetime value that’s been lost. Even if you don’t know what this is exactly, you’re still losing it with every lost sales call.

What about on the customer service side? It’s easy to equate one lost sales call with 1 lost sale which equates to the lost profit of £X/sale. But what about the lost repeat business, upgrades and opportunities to sell additional products and services. It’s actually your average customer life time value that’s been lost. Even if you don’t know what this is exactly, you’re still losing it with every lost sales call.

And then there are lost customer service calls. What is the cost of a complaint call not answered, managed or logged correctly? A request for information that’s missed or one of your additional services that’s not captured? What’s the cost to your reputation, goodwill, referrals and recommendations?

And then what’s the cost to your marketing programs? Are you cancelling marketing programs that could otherwise be working if you had accurate information on response rates? Or if you knew it was a technical issue, a lack of sales training or awareness of the program that was causing your marketing to suffer perhaps you could get your marketing program working more effectively? Are you running programs that should be cancelled but you don’t have sufficient information to know one way or another?

Our own experience says all of the above are true for different clients. So many businesses have considered the phone to not be an important enough tool to warrant closer attention, except for a bit of mystery shopping or call handling review. How much business are they missing?

But then what is a lost call? Not answered, not logged, not managed right, lost in the IVR or on transfer? However you categorise a lost call, one thing is for sure…it’s lost business.

We can help you improve your call handling and customer service with our unique revenue intelligence platform. It can analyse the front line of your business to discover your unique strengths and weaknesses and resolve them.