UK retailers jeopardise £5.5 billion in sales through poor customer service

As we are all enjoying our summer holidays, Christmas is not as far away as we might think.  A recent survey reveals  the impact that increased calls to contact centres can have on customer service and sales during this seasonal period.

With consumers starting their Christmas shopping months in advance, the increase in customer enquiries for retailers can gain momentum as early as September.  UK retailers are risking their share of the £5.5 billion Christmas sales boom by not being able to effectively handle this seasonal spike in customer service demand, which can increase by as much as 400%.

Leading up to the festive season, contact centres are inundated with customer enquiries, often involving large numbers of questions around the same topic. This increasing volume of routine, frequently asked questions (FAQs) can quickly lead to poor or slow service resulting in heightened customer frustration and lost sales at a time that represents 50-70% of a retailer’s annual revenue.

Research using Eptica’s customer base has shown that by reducing seasonal inbound FAQs and more efficiently responding to customers’ enquiries at peak times, retailers can increase sales by an average of 5%.

Dee Roche

Dee Roche, European Marketing Director at Eptica commented: “We looked at before and after scenarios for 280 organisations across a wide range of sectors and found a similar uplift in sales. This is achieved by businesses using increases in efficiency as an opportunity to redeploy customer service resources to sales conversion activity and on delivering high-quality service and advice to help potential purchasers. These benefits can only be realised by diverting low-value questions away from customer service agents.”

Retailers can experience four times their normal level of customer enquiries in the build-up to Christmas, including more than twice the normal volume of inbound emails. For contact centres that handle thousands of calls and emails a day, this increase represents a very significant volume of customer enquiries.