Want to save $243?

A new study talks about the impact of crappy customer service.  Unlike any of the rants on that topic in this space, it quantifies the effect based on research.  Not that I have to worry about letting facts get in the way of my story, but I thought I’d share it with you.

Here are the headlines:

Consumers feel the most significant root causes of poor service are:

• Repeating themselves
• Being trapped in automated self-service
• Forced to wait too long for service
• Representatives don’t know my history and value
• Cannot switch between communication channels easily

33% cite voice self-service  as the most challenging channel compared to only 1% who find it most satisfying. And 38% of consumers said it is critical to improve voice self-service to make it more intelligently integrated with human assisted service. Where they were trapped in an automated system, consumers spent, on average, more than 9.5 minutes trying to reach a human.

It goes on to say that the average value (in one year) of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned is $243.

You can read the summary here but you already knew all this since you’re a loyal reader.  Right?