For years, many service teams have worked on answering calls faster, replying to emails sooner and resolving more issues on the first contact. One question often gets overlooked along the way: why is the customer getting in touch at all? A large share of contacts does not arise because customers want something new, but because something went wrong earlier. Teams that eliminate these contacts at the source relieve their staff permanently \u2013 and more effectively than any reduction in handling time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
British organisational researcher John Seddon distinguishes between two kinds of demand in service. Value demand<\/strong> is what the service exists for: an order, a consultation, a new question. Failure demand<\/strong>, by contrast, is caused by an organisation failing to do something, or failing to do it right. Typical examples are the call because a delivery has not arrived, the query about a confusing invoice, or the second contact because a promised callback never came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How large this share can become is shown by a well-documented example: according to a National Audit Office report from May 2024, the UK tax authority HMRC estimated that around 72 per cent<\/strong> of its calls in 2023\/24 were failure demand \u2013 up from 65 per cent in 2018\/19. For 2024\/25, the UK government cited 76 per cent in reply to a parliamentary question. A tax authority is not a mid-sized company, but the pattern is the same: when processes behind the service break down, the consequences end up on the phone. Industry surveys in the UK found years ago that on average more than a quarter of contacts were avoidable, and up to 40 per cent in individual companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The awkward thing about failure demand is that the service team can hardly eliminate it on its own. The causes usually sit in other departments. In practice, the same groups appear again and again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only the last group is fully in the hands of the service team. All the others need logistics, accounting, sales or product development. That is exactly why the topic often stalls: the service team carries the load, but the cause lies elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without data, every discussion comes down to gut feeling. The foundation is a simple, mandatory record of the contact reason for every call, email and chat. A few rules have proven useful:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In myContactCenter, the contact reason can be set as a mandatory field when wrapping up a call and in the ticket. AI-generated conversation summaries can also suggest a reason, so recording it takes hardly any time. What matters, however, is not the tool but that the list is used consistently by everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After four to six weeks of recording, a clear picture almost always emerges: a handful of contact reasons account for a large share of the volume. A simple ranking by frequency \u2013 combined with average handling time \u2013 shows where effort pays off most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most important step is organisational: each of the major avoidable contact reasons gets an owner outside customer service<\/strong>. If a third of all calls concern invoices, the issue belongs on the accounting team’s desk, not in agent training. A monthly meeting where customer service presents the figures and the departments report on their measures creates the necessary accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The measures are often unspectacular: an invoice with understandable line items, a shipping confirmation with a realistic delivery date, a form that checks required fields before submission. Small changes like these often relieve the team noticeably, because they remove a frequent contact reason entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is important to track the impact. The right metric is not total volume, which depends on season and customer numbers, but the contact rate per transaction<\/strong> \u2013 for example, delivery-related calls per 100 orders. If it drops after a change, the measure worked. If it stays the same, the cause lay elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A note on scope: redirecting contacts to self-service or notifying customers in advance can make sense. But both treat the symptom, not the cause. A delivery that arrives on time needs neither a status page nor a notification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Failure demand is not a service team problem; it is a mirror of the entire organisation. Customer service is the first to see where processes break down \u2013 it just needs to make that insight visible and take it to the right place. Teams that record contact reasons consistently, flag avoidable ones and assign owners in the relevant departments reduce volume for good and free up time for the requests where they are truly needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you like to see how myContactCenter records and analyses contact reasons across all channels? Book a consultation via the online calendar on ilogixx.de \u2013 the ilogixx team will show you what this could look like in your service process.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A large share of calls happens because something went wrong earlier. How service teams record contact reasons, identify avoidable ones and eliminate them for good together with other departments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_il_seo_titel":"Failure Demand: Eliminate Avoidable Customer Contacts","_il_seo_beschreibung":"Many calls happen because something went wrong earlier. How service teams track contact reasons and remove avoidable contacts at the source.","footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-operations-and-metrics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57377,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57370\/revisions\/57377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilogixx.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The most common causes lie outside the service team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Step one: record contact reasons properly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Step two: find the big drivers and assign owners<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step three: implement measures and track their impact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion: the best contact is the one that is not needed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n