Customer Consulting launches benchmarking research service
The specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) has launched a research service which aims to help member companies to discover what truth there is behind old adages such as that ‘it’s five times more expensive to find a new customer than it is to sell to existing customers’.
Already organisations from a number of sectors of the economy, including the retail motor industry and the financial services sector, have agreed to co-operate and share sales-related financial data among themselves.
CCL’s managing director, Simon Rustom, explained: “In a recession, companies tend to ignore the old adages and devote a high proportion of their resources to finding new customers, rather than spending their budgets on keeping and growing existing customers. Yet, our experience – and that of our client base - over the years has been that, if you give your customers a high level of service, you find opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling and so on.
“We believe that maintaining an effective customer retention strategy is more cost-effective than seeking new customers – but we want to prove, or indeed disprove, this point.”
In particular, CCL’s benchmarking research service will examine the costs of:
• Selling to existing versus new customers
• Retaining existing versus recruiting new customers
• Re-selling to old customers versus selling to new customers
According to CCL’s Kathy Duxbury: “In bringing the old sales-related adages up-to-date, we’ll be analysing businesses by sector and, perhaps, by channel. This objective and cross-sector data should help customer service directors to not only show the true costs of selling but also to make the business case for allocating resources to retain existing customers.”
CCL is inviting companies from any and every sector of the economy to join its benchmarking research service, share their ‘sensitive’ data - with no chance of it falling into competitors’ hands - and benefit from access to objective research findings. For further details contact Kathy Duxbury at CCL on 01908 441012/ 07976 405779, or email [email protected]
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