Three Key Signs It's Time to Expand Your Customer Service Team
Hello customer service managers! You may think you’re delivering excellent customer service when in reality you are missing the signs that it is time to expand your team. There is a gap in perception amongst customer service managers. According to a study by Bain & Company, 80% of companies believe they are delivering excellent service.
However, only 8% of customers believe they have received quality service. So, while you may think everything is fine, your service could be lacking compared to competitors. Luckily, we’re here to share three key signs that it may be time to expand your customer service team.
1. Response Times Getting Longer
This one may be the easiest to identify, and quite possibly the most important metric when determining a successful customer service team. According to a study done by American Express, 33% of Americans say they’ll consider switching companies after just a single instance of poor service. You leave them on hold, they leave you behind.
Our research team pulled the following response times:
Voice: Best in class call centers answer 80% of calls in 20 seconds (Call Centre Helper)
Email: 41% of customers expect a reply within 6 hours of the customer service request (Forrester)
Chat: Customers using chat expect response times between 45-60 seconds (Live Chat benchmark)
Social: 32% of social media users expect a response within 30 minutes, and 42% expect a response within 60 minutes (Convince and Convert)
Moral of the story? If your team is having trouble replying to any and all inquiries by these stated times, it’s time to explore adding some personnel.
2. Decrease In Quality
Being fast only part of the battle. No one will care if you responded to their customer service inquiry in a timely manner if the quality of the response is not up to par. According to Forrester, 66% of customers believe valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer experience.
In layman’s terms, most people want to feel special, attended to, and cared for. They do not want to feel brushed off, or rushed. In a study done by Newvoicemedia, feeling unappreciated is the #1 reason customers switch away from products and services. Turning out rushed, haphazard responses that feel impersonal and uncaring is a great way to make your customers feel unappreciated.
If your NPS or customer satisfaction scores are not on par with industry benchmarks (link), it may be time to expand your team.
3. You’re Picking Up Too Much Slack
This one is a tougher metric to put into numbers, but all too important. You are a customer service manager, not an agent. If you find yourself having to step in and relieve the workload of your team, it’s time to expand.
You may be telling yourself it’s cheaper for you to do the extra work than bring on another couple of agents. Well, you would be lying to yourself. According to the Harvard Business Review, it can be anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retaining one.
So while you may be saving money on payroll, ultimately you’re losing. If you are too busy doing your agent’s job for them, then you cannot be managing them. In the world of customer service, it is always better to be a driving forward than idling. Companies lose massive amounts of revenue due to poor service alone. The most well-trained elite staff cannot do their jobs properly if there isn't enough of them.
If you’re still on the fence, we are happy to provide you with a quick cost analysis of expanding your team organically, using an outsourcer, and the pros and cons of both!