Yes, Brands Can Turn Customer Service Into a Profit Center

Yes, Brands Can Turn Customer Service Into a Profit Center

Consumer goods companies are up against ever-decreasing margins. Customer service can help boost your bottom line.

Share article

Over the years, you've put a lot of money into your customer service centers. You've upgraded technology, upskilled your agents, and invested in 24/7 self-service options. And that was a smart move, because white-glove customer service - for both B2B and B2C - is essential for consumer goods (CG) brands who want to build long-term, loyal relationships with customers.

You may view your contact center as a cost center, with ongoing pressure to cut operational expenses. But here's the thing: Cutting costs can't come at the expense of customer service. You need to find ways to decrease costs while keeping your customers satisfied. Why? Because happy customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend your brand to others. Customer service and profitability go hand in hand.

Why customer service is important for driving brand revenue

The consumer goods industry is facing numerous headwinds, leading brands to look for new sources of profit and revenue. To survive and thrive, you must maximize every aspect of your business operations.

We've seen customer service evolve in recent years: Contact centers traditionally came into play after a purchase - handling lost shipments, defective merchandise, and returns or exchanges. But service now plays a role along the entire route to market. Service agents may get involved even before customers choose to buy. For example, customers can reach out to agents with questions about products they're considering. Agents can guide purchase decisions and increase basket size with personalized product recommendations.

Your contact centers offer a number of opportunities to support your broader business goals through great customer service and profitability. With AI and data analytics, agents can enhance customer satisfaction while contributing to sales through personalized recommendations, upselling, and cross-selling. This is essential for companies to improve their overall profitability and achieve sustainable growth.

That's especially true as many consumers are making decisions based on price, and most retailers are pushing price increases back on brands. In fact, research shows companies that view service centers as value centers achieve 3.5x the growth over those that don't.

5 strategies to turn a contact center into a profit center

Transforming customer service into a profit center requires several key strategies:

1. Make your data accessible and actionable

The first step is to get your data house in order. This means unifying all data on a single platform across your organization, so all employees can access a single source of truth. Agents should have the same holistic view of customer interactions, via your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, as the sales, marketing, and account management teams. Aligning service and sales creates a seamless, connected customer experience and allows the two teams to support each other's efforts.

By analyzing customer interactions and making those results available at an agent's fingertips, you make agents more intuitive and proactive. This data-driven approach helps them make better-informed decisions that can lead to increased customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

What's more, AI-powered platforms provide agents with real-time insights into a customer's history with the brand, prompting more meaningful and wide-ranging conversations. This increases the likelihood of additional purchases. It also helps build a stronger brand that is committed to meeting individual customer needs.

2. Minimize operational costs with AI

Embedding AI into the contact center's flow of work can increase efficiency and productivity. AI helps deliver automated case routing, predictive analytics, next-best actions, self-service, message analysis, and speech analytics, without requiring agents to swivel-chair. With AI baked into their dashboard, agents get informed, data-driven guidance through their entire customer interaction, allowing for faster resolutions. And by increasing their efficiency and productivity, you lower operational costs.

First, increase low-touch case deflections with self-service options such as FAQs and chatbots. AI has traditionally used chatbots and self-service portals to support contact centers. The next generation of self-service is deploying autonomous agents that use these same tools. The AI agents can engage with consumers in normal conversational language to tackle problems that traditional methods couldn't. But when humans need to be pulled into the loop, a generative summary makes handoff seamless for both the service agent and the customer.

Next, integrate your CRM system with the contact center software. This provides agents with immediate access to customer data, reducing call-handling times and improving the quality of service.

And finally, automate routine tasks with AI to reduce the manual workload for agents. For example, automation tools can prioritize and route tickets, summarize and log case resolutions for future reference, and even manage customer follow-ups without human input. Then agents can focus on more high-value interactions.

3. Boost sales with proactive service, upselling, and cross-selling

To revamp your contact centers, you should transform service agents into trusted customer advisors.

For example, help your agents be more proactive by anticipating customer needs and addressing issues before they escalate. Your CRM system is critical for this, and AI can help by analyzing patterns from vast amounts of historical data to predict future customer behavior and potential issues. If data shows a particular product tends to sell faster within a certain timeframe, AI can alert the service team to reach out to customers to place orders for additional units to avoid an out-of-stock occurrence.

For connected products, AI can monitor product performance in real time and send alerts to both customers and service teams when it detects a problem. This immediate notification allows for quick action to prevent further issues or to prepare for a service intervention. You can even go one step further: Use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to inform customers of updates, policy changes, or potential disruptions in service, so customers feel valued and well-informed.

AI can also assist service teams in upselling and cross-selling initiatives. By understanding individual customer preferences and past interactions, AI can tailor communications and recommendations specifically to each customer. This can give confidence to service agents who struggle with making sales offers. For instance, if a customer frequently orders a particular part or service, AI can proactively suggest reordering or scheduling maintenance before the customer runs out or experiences a service disruption.

When used strategically, AI-powered upselling and cross-selling can transform your contact center into a sales powerhouse. By recommending relevant products or services during customer interactions, agents can increase the average order value and drive sales growth. AI can predict customer needs and preferences, so your agents offer just the right suggestions and assistance in the moment. This makes every service engagement an opportunity for agents to support the sales, marketing, and key account management teams in reaching their business goals.

4. Expand value-added services

In addition to their primary products, consumer goods brands can further drive exceptional customer service and profitability by offering value-added services. Extended warranties, maintenance contracts, and personalized customer support are just a few examples of services that help you build customer loyalty, generate recurring revenue streams, and set your brand apart from competitors. Use the first-party data collected by your customer service agents to identify and develop services that meet emerging customer needs. Then, agents can recommend relevant services to customers during future service calls.

AI also can manage and optimize loyalty programs so agents can sign up new customers and help existing loyalty customers activate and redeem rewards they didn't know they had earned. Plus, your AI platform can generate unexpected and personalized rewards for agents to offer customers during a service interaction, increasing the perceived and actual value of the loyalty program. This makes the programs more attractive to customers, encouraging continued and long-term engagement.

Another high-value service is automated customer education, with AI platforms offering educational content and tutorials on products and services. For example, after purchasing a high-tech gadget, a customer might receive automated, personalized tutorials on how to use it, which adds value to the purchase.

5. Measure success

To keep your new profit center on track, data-driven evaluations are a must. By using a robust measurement framework with key performance indicators (KPIs), you can quantify your success. Metrics like sales sourced by service teams, account gross margin, and customer retention reflect agent performance. Use customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and customer effort score (CES) to understand customer loyalty and satisfaction. Improving these metrics through enhanced service can lead to higher retention rates, which increases customer lifetime value and profitability.

Use AI tools to gather and analyze customer feedback across various channels for deeper insights into customer needs and satisfaction. This analysis can identify dissatisfied customers or those experiencing recurring issues, so you can proactively reach out to address concerns and improve the relationship. These insights also help you develop new products and value-added services that address customer desires or pain points, expanding the product offering and deepening the customer relationship.

To maintain momentum, embrace a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. Use the insights from your KPI analysis to identify areas for growth, adopt industry best practices, and adjust your processes.

Ready to rethink customer service and profitability?

You don't need to choose between offering great customer service and increasing profitability. If your contact center isn't contributing to your bottom line, now is the time to start. By empowering service agents, using AI, and executing on data-driven strategies, you can improve customer satisfaction, increase revenue, and gain a competitive advantage.

Share article

Just For You

Explore related content by topic

• Consumer Goods
• Customer Experience
• Industry
• Role
• Sales Operations
• Sales Strategy
• Service
• Topic

Patricia Staino is an editorial lead on the industries marketing team at Salesforce, working across all industries but specializing in retail and consumer goods.