Today’s CBS Sunday Morning’s cover story featured a look at the evolution of customer service, call centers, and propensity of large corporations for putting customer service on hold. Customer service call centers are a very big business. Estimates of 43,000,000,000 telephone calls are made to American call centers each year. They employ more than three million American workers. Two million oversees.
Ever wonder why large corporations would ever consider farming out their customer service to foreign agents or even worse those press one for this and two for that voice response systems?
Money.
It costs $7.50 for an American agent to answer a customer service telephone call. $2.35 to out source it. Thirty-five cents for you to press number three. Everyone was happy of course because their businesses saved a lot of money. Everyone of course except the customer.
Things are changing however. The Internet has become a great leveler. Tell your customer service horror story to a web site such as Consumer Report’s Consumerist, and suddenly the offending corporation has found itself in a PR firestorm. Corporations such as FedEx have adopted a different mentality. They believe that customer service is not a necessary evil, rather an opportunity. Good customer service is part of their corporate culture. Comparisons to the bankrupt United States Postal Service are in order.
As small business owners we would never consider “farming” out our customer service calls.
More often than not we are the customer service representative. Admitting we are wrong. Fixing what we can. Implementing new strategies to avoid further problems. Small business should and do run circles around any large business when it comes to fixing customer service problems.
The other conclusion I drew is how the Internet has changed the business marketplace. Both for large and small businesses. If you haven’t yet discovered the power of the Google place’s page, yahoo local, yelp, manta....all free local Internet listings.....you need to. Your future customers have. We will write to you more about these free internet listings later this year. The Internet is the great leveler.
What’s up with this three-page questionnaire you have included this month?
As your tax guy I never want to stop expressing my appreciation for your business. I have done the very hard job of convincing you to pay me money for my tax advice. Thank you. I began wonder why more clients don’t take more advantage of our proactive tax planning service. After all I am selling free money. A chance to reduce your tax bill. Guaranteeing much less pain on April 15th. My conclusion is that I am not telling you enough or making it easy enough for you to take advantage of it.
Two years ago we licensed a tax planning tool...one that has helped us more than ever before... to identify and explore opportunities with our clients to cut their tax bill called Tax Coach.
I think Tax Coach gives my clients the most innovative proactive tax planing reports that I have come upon in 30 years of practice. Finally a simple plan for beating the IRS. Legally.
In fact, our research and testing show that clients who implement our tax coaching service can rescue thousands in wasted tax dollars, year after year.
We have documented results from clients just like you, and I think we can do the same for you.
Tax coaching is more involved than garden-variety tax preparation. Therefore, we have to limit the number of clients we accept.
Oh did I mention your cost to get this plan? Zero. Nothing. It is our way of saying thanks for being a client. In exchange of course for your honest feedback and testimonials.
Take a few minutes, fill out the questionnaire and return it to our office. I will plug in the numbers and generate a personal tax plan with an estimate summary of tax savings for you. I will call you to arrange an appointment when I am done.
I can guarantee you will be very excited with the results.
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