Poor customer service is costing your company money.

You’ve probably seen one of those articles with “39 customer service stats you can’t ignore” or something similar. They all share some scary numbers:

• Poor customer service costs billions

• People tell lots of other people about service failures

• Don’t even get me started on social media

Unfortunately, your executives aren't as excited. 

They like the idea of good customer service. They're just reluctant to invest in improving it. Things like creating a customer service vision, implementing a more useful survey, or training employees cost time, money, and resources.

Three things executives don't like spending are time, money, and resources.

So how can you get your executives' attention?

General statistics won't do it. You need to put some real numbers on how customer service is affecting your business.

Here are 13 ways you can calculate the true cost of customer service.

How does customer service affect revenue?

Your executives are much more likely to listen if you can connect customer service to revenue. Try to demonstrate a clear link between investing in better customer service and generating more revenue.

These examples won't apply to every situation, so try to find one that works for yours:

1. Repeat Business. Start by identifying your churn rate (the percent of customers who leave). Use your Voice of Customer Program to estimate how many leave due to poor service. Calculate the lost revenue.

2. Average Order Value (AOV). This statistic works great in environments like retail where service has a direct impact on sales. Determine the average value of a single order. Identify specific ways that improved service could increase that number. Calculate the additional revenue you could gain.

3. Sales Per Hour. I like this metric even better than AOV for situations where hourly employees are generating sales. You pay employees by the hour, so why not calculate how much revenue they generate per hour? Determine the current rate, identify factors that will improve it, and calculate the potential revenue gain.

4. Lifetime Value. A customer who spends an average of $50 may not be impressive. But, what if they spent $50 every week and could reasonably be expected to remain a customer for ten years? That customer is suddenly worth $26,000 to your business ($50 x 52 weeks x 10 years = $26,000). Calculate the average lifetime value for your customers and you'll see exactly how important they are.

5. Returns. Customer service can prevent products from being returned due to customer error. Better customer education can lead to better customer satisfaction with your product. Estimate the percentage of your returns that could have been prevented. Multiple this percentage by the dollar value of your annual returns. This calculation, known as preventable returns, represents the potential saved revenue due to improved service.

6. Lost Sales. Poor customer service can cost you sales in a number of ways. Rude employees and long lines might cause customers to abandon a planned purchases. A phantom stockout (where the item is in stock, but can't be found) can also cause customers to leave empty-handed. Calculate the revenue lost to these problems and you might have a case for investing in service.

What does it cost to service customers?

It stands to reason that better service will reduce costs. The trick is showing your executives exactly how this happens in your business.

Here are a few examples. Try to see if any are relevant to your business.

7. Service Discounts. Companies often give customers freebies or discounts to compensate for poor service. For example, a restaurant might offer a free dessert when a meal is poorly cooked. Calculate the cost of these discounts and estimate the potential savings you could achieve by reducing the problems that cause them.

8. Employee Attrition. Customer service employees don't like to play for a losing team. Turnover often improves when employees feel they are empowered to help their customers. Calculate the cost of turnover (including recruitment, training, and lost productivity costs). Estimate the savings you could achieve from reducing turnover by a reasonable amount. You can use this worksheet or this guide to help you.

You'll need to know your labor cost per contact for the next few examples.

This is your employees' fully loaded salaries (including taxes and benefits) divided by their average contacts per hour. For example, if you pay a customer service agent $15 per hour (including taxes and benefits) and they handle an average of 10 calls per hour, then your cost per contact is $1.50.

9. Contact Reduction. Identify the top reasons why customers contact you. Determine whether there's a problem you can solve that would prevent customers from needing help. Estimate the number of contacts that could be reduced by solving that problem and calculate the potential savings by multiplying the number of contacts saved by your cost per contact.

10. First Contact Resolution (FCR). Determine the percentage of issues that are resolved on the first contact. (Here's a handy guide from Oracle.) Improving FCR means reducing wasteful contacts. Set a target for FCR improvement and use your cost per contact to calculate the projected savings.

11. Escalation Rate. Complex contacts often get escalated from a less expensive source to a more expensive source. For example, escalating an issue from chat to phone costs extra money. Start by identifying the number of escalations for a specific time period (week, month, quarter, etc.). Next, multiply this figure times your cost per contact for the more expensive channel. Finally, estimate the potential savings you could achieve from reducing escalations by a reasonable amount.

How does customer service affect word-of-mouth marketing?

You can acquire more new customers through better customer service. Happy customers will tell friends and family members about your business. This is known as word-of-mouth marketing.

See if either of these examples will work for your business.

12. Referrals. Track the number of new customers you gain via referrals from existing customers. (You can also use a Net Promoter Score survey to gauge your customers' likelihood to refer.) Calculate the value of these new customers using Average Lifetime Value or a similar statistic. Estimate the revenue gain from improving your referral rate.

13. Online Rating. Your business's ratings on online review sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor directly correlate to new customers. One study estimated that a one-star increase in a restaurant's Yelp rating leads to increased revenue of 5 to 9 percent. You can put together a business case for improvement by making some reasonable assumptions about the value of enhancing your company's online reputation.

Resources for reducing customer service costs

I realized I've covered these metrics at a very high level. You might be looking for some additional guidance. Here are a few resources to help you out:

• Listen to the legendary Jeanne Bliss share a fantastic approach.

• Check out this case study on sharing KPIs with executives.

• You may also contact me directly with your questions about performing these calculations.

Finally, this post is part of an on-going series about the connection between operational excellence and customer service. You can read the other posts here.