Churn is becoming the bottomless money pit of most businesses. What does “churn” mean? It’s a cute term given to a very ugly realty: big bucks lost due to turnover in technology, staff and customers.
By the time you read this, your phone will become obsolete. Your customer will be trying a new flavor-of-the-week vendor, and your employees will be searching for new opportunities on LinkedIn.
In this swirling environment of change, how do you get out of the churn whirlpool and stabilize your business? Read on to see the three biggest capital drains, and the surprising way they all relate.
1. Technology
The Churn: According to IDC, global information technology spending will top $4.8 trillion in 2018, with the U.S. accounting for approximately $1.5 trillion of the market. While the digital transformation is revolutionizing the way we do our jobs, not every shiny new object represents a sound investment. Too often companies are jumping on the bandwagon of new devices, software, or carriers that have a new toy, only to end up with an underutilized program, or needing to replace it altogether in a short amount of time.
Stop the Churn– Spend Smart: Is the answer to sit back and avoid IT upgrades? NO! Proactively planning for a digital future and strategically implementing the right technology will allow your company to ride the digital wave rather than be knocked over by it.
How do you know what technology is right, and what’s wrong? The right technology will improve two areas: customer satisfaction and employee retention.
{{cta(’88e095a8-89b8-436f-b07c-e17161ae1444′)}}
- Employees
The Churn: Sources estimate that replacing the right employee can cost between 30% to 400% (average stands at 150%) of an employee’s annual salary. According to a study from Allied Workforce Mobility Survey, almost 30% of companies reported that it takes at least a year or more for new talent to leverage full productivity.
Stop the Churn– Send them home: There is a big a push to transition to more remote workers, and for good reason. Employees are consistently happier at home, experience less stress, lower costs, vehicle wear and tear, etc.
Employers have reduced overhead costs with less brick and mortar space, reduced managerial needs and therefore increased profitability. Relaxed and comfortable employees also leads to reduced tardiness, absenteeism, and eventually: attrition.
One of the greatest gains in this area however, is the boost in morale and the subsequent effect on customers. There is a direct correlation between the happiness of an employee and their ability to deliver excellent customer service.
- Customer Satisfaction /Experience
The Churn: Recent studies show that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service. Currently, the biggest indicator of customer retention isn’t brand loyalty, pricing, or being wowed by your bells and whistles. Customers are most likely to stick based on the ease of doing business. Translation: if it takes too long, or feel difficult in any way, a customer will go elsewhere. Ease of doing business ratings, or EODB
scores, have become a key performance indicator of companies that are maintaining their customer base.
Stop the Churn– Make it easy! The right technology not only greases the wheels of your operations, it makes interactions effortlessly efficient. And that translates to customer loyalty. If it’s difficult to get through to a representative, takes too long to look up their account information, multiple department transfers require repeating the same information over and over again, you can bet the consumer will be googling an alternative vendor. These common frustrations don’t necessarily require hiring more staff, but they could be easily remedied with the right software programs.
The right technology means optimizing your investment budget, and putting it where it matters. Deploying innovations to improve employee retention and ease of doing business leads to happy employees, and happy customers. Happy customers lead to happy employees, and happy employees lead to even happier customers……
….and voila!
By focusing on your company’s unique needs and implementing the right technology for those needs, you will step out of the churn merry-go-round of loss and frustration, and step into a self-perpetuating and symbiotic circle of success.
Schedule a meeting with an experienced IT advisor, and find out what technology will make an impact for you.
{{cta(‘b1d96109-9dca-4927-b347-97005098949f’)}}
