The Cost Of Missed Connections From Existing Customers

"Every check the marketing team writes has one underlying goal: Get a customer or prospect to pay attention to us. To raise their hand. To start a conversation. But once they're a customer, it's the opposite. It should be easy. They already know us. They're already using our product. They've already said yes. And yet when they call, we do everything in our power not to talk to them."

"Of course, no executive gets on stage and announces, "This year, our strategy is to spend $40 million generating demand and then force those people into a phone tree that tells them to check the FAQ." But that's exactly what's happening. We've built an entire discipline around "call deflection." I want to talk about what that's costing us. Not the operational cost of handling calls, but the other costs nobody's calculating."

"A customer calls because they have a problem, a question or a need. Maybe they're trying to change a flight and, while they have you on the line, would happily book another upcoming trip. Maybe they have a question about a charge on their bank statement and, once reassured, would be open to hearing about a new product."

"Many companies consider inbound calls an inefficiency to be engineered away. The goal becomes deflection. Get them to self-serve. Get them off the phone. The problem is that customers push back. Hard. According to ContactBabel's 2024 U.S. Contact Center Decision-Makers' Guide, 32% of calls that enter telephony"

Companies spend heavily on advertising to attract prospects and start conversations. After someone becomes a customer, the experience often shifts toward avoiding contact rather than helping. Many organizations treat inbound calls as inefficiencies and aim to deflect calls into self-service channels. Customers frequently resist deflection when they have problems, questions, or needs that require real-time help. Existing customers become a leaky bucket because unresolved issues and friction reduce satisfaction and future engagement. The result is a hidden cost beyond operational call handling, including lost opportunities to address concerns and offer relevant next steps while the customer is already engaged.

Read at Forbes