Looking to make your point in a presentation about customer service? Trying to sell the case to the boss about why he or she should really care about the customer experience? Considering a foray into social customer service? How about some facts and figures about Social CRM? Stats make a good argument, and help give you instant credibility. On top of that, they are interesting and fun to read. Here are a few that you may find valuable whether you are making the case to the executive team or simply writing a blog post.

1. Good customer service = Bottom line results.

• Stat(s): A majority (61%) of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today’s economic environment and will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service.
• Source: American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, August 2010

2. Poor customer service = Lost customers.

• Stat(s): 17% will leave you after a single service mess up; 40% will leave you after two blunders and 28% will leave after the third mistake. That adds up to an overwhelming 85% of your business that could potentially be lost due to poor customer service.
• Source: BIG Research, Jun 2010

3. Declining consumer use of telephone as a support channel = increasing use of self service as a support channel.

• Stat: 45% of consumers prefer to communicate with customer service over NON-telephone channels (i.e. web self service, social media, email, etc).
• Source: Ovum, Genesys “Global Cross Channel Survey”, March 2010
• Stat(s): 36% of online US customers crave self-reliance for service. That preference is even stronger among younger customers: 46% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 42% of 30- to 42-year-olds prefer to be self-reliant. Only 28% of respondents prefer to resolve a service issue by speaking to someone on the phone.
• Source: Forrester Research

4. Multi Channel Customer Interactions = Need for integration and process centric technology platforms

• Stat: 85% of the contact centers observed by Gartner indicated that the multiple interaction channels are not synchronized.
• Source: Gartner, February 2010

5. Delivering integrated and actionable Insights to a Unified Agent Desktop = Reduced Agent Training Time.

• Stat: The technology behind interaction guidance involves systems that extract data regarding the customer and the products owned by the customer, and suggest the best flow for the dialogue. Automating the assembly of actionable information on the Agent Desktop can result in agent training time dropping 25% to 40%.
• Source: Gartner, February 2010

6. Social Media Monitoring and Engagement = Mainstream consumer and enterprise adoption by 2014.

• Stats: By the end of 2014, 45% of contact centers will have integrated some type of social media support – monitoring social networking sites for mentions of a company/product, responding to blog or Twitter posts with an invitation to participate in a survey, incorporating tweets as a means of communicating directly with the contact center (currently, between 6.5% of contact centers have a Social CRM Strategy in place).
• Source: DMG Consulting, July 2010
• Stat: 79% of the Fortune 100 are already present and listening (over social media platforms), using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• Source: Burson-Marsteller Evidence-Based Communications Group

These are just a few pieces of research that can help guide your customer initiatives. Making note of them may help you stay away from becoming a bad customer service viral phenomenon.