Generating Sales at the Expense of Service, Satisfaction & Loyalty
There was an post in the Customer Service Reader that discussed declining Customer Satisfaction in the retail sector. Claes Fornell of the National Quality Research Center attributes the decline to companies pushing their staff to generate sales at the expense of service:
"Too much pressure on staff to generate sales can have a detrimental effect on the quality of service that the staff is able to provide, which, in turn, has a negative effect on repeat buying. Since many retailers measure and manage productivity, but don’t usually have good measures of the quality of customer service [emphasis added], it seems possible that some companies put too much emphasis on productivity at the expense of service."
We have been seeing this trend in call centers recently. We've seen a contact center manager alter the weighting of his team's QA scale so that the upselling component counted for over one-third of the CSR's Overall Service score. The push for cross-selling and up-selling is on the rise, and companies are not always weighing the long-term effects that this can have on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Up-selling and cross-selling can be tremendous tools for revenue generation, but it is critical that companies measure their customer's willingness to hear these offers. Even with customers who are open to hearing these offers, it is important that a customer's issues and questions be resolved with exemplary soft skills before the offer is made. Without the resolution and soft skill components delivered prior to the sales pitch, the sales efforts will not be as effective and may serve to erode customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Technorati Tags:
sales, up sell, cross sell, QA, satisfaction, loyalty, research, CSR
"Too much pressure on staff to generate sales can have a detrimental effect on the quality of service that the staff is able to provide, which, in turn, has a negative effect on repeat buying. Since many retailers measure and manage productivity, but don’t usually have good measures of the quality of customer service [emphasis added], it seems possible that some companies put too much emphasis on productivity at the expense of service."
We have been seeing this trend in call centers recently. We've seen a contact center manager alter the weighting of his team's QA scale so that the upselling component counted for over one-third of the CSR's Overall Service score. The push for cross-selling and up-selling is on the rise, and companies are not always weighing the long-term effects that this can have on customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Up-selling and cross-selling can be tremendous tools for revenue generation, but it is critical that companies measure their customer's willingness to hear these offers. Even with customers who are open to hearing these offers, it is important that a customer's issues and questions be resolved with exemplary soft skills before the offer is made. Without the resolution and soft skill components delivered prior to the sales pitch, the sales efforts will not be as effective and may serve to erode customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Technorati Tags:
sales, up sell, cross sell, QA, satisfaction, loyalty, research, CSR
posted by
the QA guy at
Friday, March 24, 2006
2 Comments:
It's not right to pressure employees if there isn't a deadline or quota at all. Unfortunately, the sales department always has a quota. That's why the "Can you handle pressure?" question exists.
By
Sonia Roody, at 1:35 PM
Oh come on! Life is just full of pressures. Even nature has pressures; have you ever seen the look on a cat or a dog's face when crossing a street?
Seriously, your entire statement screams of inconsistencies. And the slogan at the clearly gives away the link building motive.
Pressure need not be pushed for it to take effect in some situations. A clothes iron doesn't need to be pressed hard on top of clothes to do its job. It's all in the mentality of the employees, as to whether they give value to what they're doing, or not.
By
Aaron Wall, at 7:56 AM
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