Leaders See Customer Service as a Value Center

When companies approach their customer service as a value center rather than a cost center, revenue growth is higher, new research from Accenture found.

In fact, these companies achieve 3.5 times more revenue growth while spending an average of only 50 basis points more of their revenue on customer service.

“For decades, companies developed service strategies that were fixated on cost reduction, which relegated customer interactions to cost drivers. Today, thanks to the abundance of customer data, analytics, and new technologies, service interactions are becoming an essential opportunity to drive value,” says Erika Simpson, managing director of Accenture Strategy, Customer Sales and Service. “There is a real need for a full shift in the organizational mind-set of companies to a model that continuously turns customer interactions into predictive insights and meaningful actions that expand trust and drive growth.”

The research and advanced modeling uncovered the following three key opportunities to activate customer service as a value center:

1. Grow trust with proactive, predictive service. Seventy-five percent of B2B and 66 percent of B2C customers indicated that proactive service solutions are important, but less effectively provided. Service organizations can mitigate the severity and frequency of customer-initiated effort with the inclusion of proactive, predictive capabilities.
2. Grow usage by helping customers get more value.The second most substantial value driver for B2C customers is when service helps them get the most value out of their products. Customer service agents can become trusted advisers to maximize value delivered to customers by providing personalized and contextually relevant strategic advice on how to get the most value from their purchases.
3. Grow possibilities by activating service insights in the front office.Companies are seeing more than 10 times higher revenue growth the more involved their service organization is in the development of new products. Companies can modify how products and services are developed by integrating insights from the service organization into product innovation.

Ultimately, a real “end-to-endless” customer service will require strategy and technology investments underpinned by a reimaged service experience for customers to maximize the potential value creation opportunity, the report says.

“Customers remember the unexpected—both good and bad—and the leaders will be those who reinvent service around shared values with their customers and help deliver good both ways,” says Edwin Van der Ouderaa, global lead for customer sales and service at Accenture. “The key to a successful customer service strategy is using your data and insights to empower your business to anticipate customer needs and ensure all interactions add value to the customer’s experience.”