3) How Easy Do You Make It for Customers to Submit Payment?

a) Suppose that you DO accept credit cards. Even though risk of online credit card purchasing has been exaggerated, and isn't necessarily more risky than offline transactions, many consumers are concerned about submitting their credit card data online.

With this in mind, in addition to being equipped to accept online credit card orders through a secure server, do you provide alternate ordering options for those who hesitate (or refuse) to order online by credit card?

What about options to order with check, money order, or credit card, by phone, fax, or postal mail?

b) Are your order forms simple to use and understand, or confusing and inconvenient to use, even for most inexperienced users? How do you know?

Do you work hard to eliminate all guesswork for customers, provide complete order details, and guide them simply and gently through ordering process?

Remember: Any extra hoop you require prospects and customers to jump through is an extra obstacle in way of a sale; another reason to change their minds about buying from you.

Now don't feel bad if you find areas for improvement in points above. Look at them as an opportunity to increase your profits, and do something about those that apply to your situation.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there is always room for improvement - in every business in existence.

Unfortunately, there's not enough room in this article to cover all obstacles that could be hindering your sales, of which there are literally hundreds!

But basic lesson behind above tips is this: Make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with you. The easier you make it, more likely they will.

More Helpful Resources...

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As quality magazine stated, second most targeted quality cost expenditure is rework. Managers need to review all of internal support processes in order to determine if resources are performing similar functions such as creating training plans, quality processes etc. Another area to perform quality appraisal is repeat contacts for same customer request due to multi channel environment. Ask yourself this question “Have I ever emailed a company requesting service and within a short period of time later called company again because did not receive a response within a reasonable time period?” If you have, then how many thousands of customers have done same thing? Here is a recommendations.

1.First, Determine importance of this issue is in one of your contact centers. The advocates should conduct a survey for approximately two weeks asking customer if they sent an email requesting same information and/or other information via email in past 24 to 36-hours. a.Create a simple tick sheet to mark yes b.Talley them up at end of day to determine impact c.Determine if this situation has a definite impact on your budget. If so, initiate a system requirement to allow advocates access to both email and call applications. You will also need to create a process to handle these call types.

How much will this suggestion potentially reduce your cost?

Assumptions: ·One email handled by CompanyX costs about $2.31 ($.33/minute * 7 minutes/email) ·One call handled by CompanyX costs about $4.20 ($.42/minute * 10 minutes / call) ·Call handle time increases by 3 minutes now call costs $5.46 ($.42/minute * 13 minutes/call) ·1000 calls a day

Call Volume Cost if call advocates work emails at a rate of 15% per thousand. ·15% of 1000 is 150 ·150 x 5.46 (cost/minute handling emails) = $819.00 ·850 x 4.2 (cost/minute NOT handling emails)= $3,570.00 ·Total cost per thousand calls = $4,389.00

Normal Call volume cost without working emails ·1000 x 4.2 = 4,200

Cost Difference ·Cost $189.00 more per thousand calls

Email reduction due to voice advocate responding to emails. ·150 x 2.31 = 346.5

Bottom-line -- you save approximately $157.5 per thousand calls based on advocates working 150 emails.

Savings per 1,000 calls = $157.50 Savings per 10,000 calls = $1575.00 Savings per 100,000 calls = $15,750.00 Savings per 1,000,000 calls = $157,500.00

It may be worth investigating to determine seriousness of issue within your contact center.

Summary

The above article provided an overview of organization rework costs, causes for rework, and ways to avoid project rework. An example of a potential cause for increase contact center cost was also provided. The next article will address training delivery cost within an organization.