Customer Success

Principles of Customer Service: Eliminating Dumb Contacts

November 16, 2011

In customer service, far too much time is spent tending to unnecessary customer contacts.

Through his research, Bill Price of Driva Solutions has found that 35 to 40 percent of customer contacts are unnecessary. In other words, the company shouldn’t be wasting time resolving inquiries that will never arise. Pinpointing their origins and finding a way to resolve these contacts is the challenge.

Billing systems can often be the source of these frustrations, Price explains. If there are differing prices on a bill or the invoice description is unclear, that can prompt a customer service contact. Addressing this is at the core of this principle, he says. To begin, create a coding system that identifies dumb contacts and then plot them on a 2-by-2 quadrant.

You will be left with a way to identify completely useless customer contacts that do nothing but keep your customer service representatives from handling more pressing matters. For more on this topic, watch the full video from OpenView Labs featuring Price.