Feb 21, 2023

CFO Notes: Why Finance Should Pay Attention to Support Experience

As your organization adjusts to tighter budgets, customer service expectations can’t afford to dwindle – meaning your support operations must do more with less. 

Investing in support experience is the best way forward, and the benefits can be boiled down to improved support efficiency through maximized spend and reduced operating costs:

  • Happier customers and less churn means expanded revenue opportunities – customer acquisition becomes more difficult, so retaining the ones you already have is paramount
  • Responding to support issues faster through workflows, routing, and AI that make support operations more successful
  • Serving the same quantity of support cases with fewer headcount OR scaling to serve more cases with the same headcount

These benefits can be seen right on the earnings statement:

How support experience directly affects the P&L statement

The Four Financial Metrics that Benefit from SX

While support experience affects the top line, bottom line, and everything in between, four financial metrics benefit the most: Net Dollar Retention, Margins, LTV/CAC, and Rule of 40.

Net Dollar Retention

68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand that offers good customer service experiences. Investing in the support experience is critical to maximizing NDR in a potential recessionary environment.

Margins

A good customer support experience does two things, it reduces customer escalations and improves support team productivity. Support spends 80% of its time managing unhappy customers, and customer escalations can cost support 10X more than a regular customer issue. A recent study decreasing customer escalations even by 10% improves employee productivity by 40%.

LTV/CAC Ratio

If a company’s customer service is excellent, a Salesforce study found that 78% of consumers will do business with them again after a mistake. Your support experience can ensure customers keep coming back, increasing LTV while keeping CAC flat or shrinking since you can focus on expanding existing customers and reducing the SG&A spend on net-new clients.

Rule of 40

Rule of 40 states that the combined number of your margins and growth should be greater than 40. When business growth is slowing, margins and efficiency become crucial. Tools that improve employee productivity without impacting customer experience become essential.

How support experience affects four key financial metrics for company health

Summary

All investments take time to pay dividends, and investing in support experience is no exception. The most successful initiatives combine the right tools, people, and processes – so don’t fall into the technology hype and make an investment that takes months to implement without any clear indication of ROI. SupportLogic is built to go live in 45 days and help you see real results within the quarter. Our customers see the following value:

Maximized spend:

  • Accelerating “time to resolution” by at least 10% – meaning fewer resources required to handle caseload
  • Improving support productivity and coaching efficiency with auto and manual QA
  • Looping in the entire organization — breaking down data silos and expanding information usage

Reduced operating costs:

  • Reducing support case escalation rates and improving NDR by up to 40%
  • Replacing tool spend for support analytics, case routing, QA, escalation management, and CRM seats – consolidating vendors and reducing CRM seat licenses
  • Optimizing technology stack with one control plane
  • Saving recruitment costs and reducing attrition

Ready to explore more about the benefits of support experience? Check out some hand-picked resources below:

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