| Website vs. Call Center |
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A good web development firm should help their clients develop a website that helps customers to resolve their situations without needing to directly contact the company. Spending the time to implement a well organized system can increase the costs of a website, but how much can it save? According to Celent, a Boston-based consulting firm, it costs $6.85 per call to serve a customer compared with $4.95 for e-mail and 50 cents by Internet. Banks on average spend more than $5,000 to hire and train one agent. Large companies realize the return on their website investment almost immediately. With some call centers employing over 1000 individuals, a well organized website could save tens of thousands of dollars each and every day. However, small and medium sized business would be well served to follow the lead of the larger companies. Take the following scenario: a small e-commerce website receives approximately 50 calls and 50 emails per day for product questions, order inquiries, billing questions, etc. According to these numbers, the website owners would be spending over $500 each day to handle customer support. This translates to near $200k per year in lost profits. Simple changes to a site can have a dramatic effect on support volume. Even a 10% reduction in call volume would have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. In fact, many customers are agitated by being forced to speak to an agent. An improvement to the website by the right development firm could mean increased customer satisfaction, higher profits, not to mention the reduction in human error and miscommunication. |