Sales Presentation Speech for Customer Service
I have to give a speech on customer service which will be at our sales forecast presentation.
I need some help in what I can say about the customer service department in a sales forecast presentation to show how our department is beneficial now and in the future.
Can you help?
Answer
Date: September 20, 2008
I hope I'm not too late to help you with your speech... here's my answer.
My experience is that sales is all about results. I know no other group that is so concerned with the bottom line... mainly because they get a bonus based on that. I don't see this as a bad thing, after all, the bottom line allows a business to continue and grow. In essence, it pays the bills.
So... your speech should be about results. More specifically, how does the customer service department influence the bottom line results of the business?
If management doesn't see how customer service adds to the bottom line of the business, they are more likely to see it as a cost center.
And management loves to drive down cost.
If you can quantify (in cold hard cash) how much the customer service department is actually adding to the bottom line, then you have an argument to turn customer service into a profit center. ROI talks.
How do you do this?
Here’s one suggestion. Talk to the marketing depart¬ment, and try to find out how much they invest in getting new customers. And how many new customers they on average gain from their ef-forts, Then you know how much is spent to gain a single customer.
Now you can do some calculations on how much is spent on keeping a customer. What does the customer service department cost in, say, a month? And how many customers call in the same period?
Now, you’re not going to sway each and every angry cus-tomer, so consider a fair percentage that stay customer because of the customer service efforts. Keep it low... say 35%.
Cost of customer service department, divided by 35% of customers calling. This is how much is spent on keeping a customer.
I’m willing to bet that this figure is much lower than the amount spent to gain customers...
Next you can unfold your plans to improve the churn rate (the remaining 65% in this example). Even if this adds costs to the department, it will only marginally increase (or even decrease) the cost to keep customers.
That’s the kind of bottom line that will get the attention it deserves!
Hope it helps!
At your service,
Erwin.
