Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Flying high? The state of customer experience in the airline industry

Published on: September 19, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Like many industries, the internet has radically changed the airline industry. It has altered the role of travel agents and led to an elimination of analogue, paper-based processes as it has moved to a digital-led model. At the same time competition has increased exponentially, with newer airlines with lower cost-bases further disrupting the sector.Avoiding the social media #failConsequently, the ...

20 years of ecommerce – and the impact on every business

Published on: August 20, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

The first secure ecommerce transaction took place 20 years ago when a lucky shopper paid $12.48 plus shipping to buy Sting’s album, Ten Summoner’s Tales, from NetMarket. From these small beginnings online sales have grown to hit £93 billion in the UK last year, according to IMRG, and are expected to top £100 billion in 2014.How we shop today is radically different to 1994, ...

Retailers must gear up for mobile influenced cross-channel sales

Published on: August 08, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Cross-channel sales, also known as web-influenced sales, are purchases that are touched by a digital channel but are not completed online.  According to US data from Forrester, cross-channel sales are becoming increasingly important and are worth four times more in total than online sales alone. In fact, the analyst estimates that cross-channel sales will reach $1.8 trillion by 2018.A big par...

A Shock to the System?

Published on: July 16, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Figures released this week by the Energy Ombudsman show that complaints against energy companies in the UK are at their highest ever level. They more than doubled, from 10,598 in the first six months of 2013 to 22,671 in the same period of 2014. 84% of complaints related to billing and this news follows previous large fines for misselling for a number of utilities.Driven by a desire to open up the...

Delivering patchy performance - UK retailers and customer service

Published on: July 02, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

The UK retail landscape has changed radically in the last ten years. The rise of the internet, new competition, increasingly demanding consumers and the slowdown caused by the recession have triggered the demise of many long-standing players, transforming the sector.How are the UK’s top retailers coping with these challenges? To find out, the Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study eva...

Winning the customer experience World Cup

Published on: June 11, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the 2014 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Brazil on Thursday. Whatever your interest in football, it is set to dominate the media for the next few weeks (or until England is knocked out).As with any major event, there is a corresponding effect on both businesses and consumers, particularly when it comes to the customer experience. I think the impac...

Creating customer advocates – why it starts with service

Published on: May 09, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Personal recommendation is one of the most powerful sales tools in the world. People naturally listen to the experiences of their friends and family and take them on board when making similar purchases. And the rise of the internet and the potentially limitless choice it brings has made recommendation even more important. How do you choose between hundreds of similar products, when you are being c...

Making telephone service more efficient as UK Government cuts off costly calls

Published on: May 02, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Despite the rise of new channels, most organisations understand that the telephone is still vital for customer service. Whether it is to discuss details of an order or to get to the bottom of a query, it is still the number one channel of choice for many consumers.However, telephone service is expensive – and it could be about to get even more costly in the UK. From 13 June 2014, companies w...

Is there anyone delivering an excellent customer experience?

Published on: April 02, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Everyone understands the importance of the customer experience to increasing loyalty and attracting new business, but how do UK brands fare in practice? Not that well, according to the first Forrester UK Customer Experience Index (CXi). Most of the 2,000 UK consumers it researched rated their experiences with 28 leading brands between ‘very poor’ and ‘OK’ – and no bra...

The changing face of financial services

Published on: March 21, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

A generation ago, financial services products were primarily sold face to face, either in branches or door to door, with documents manually filled in and posted to their destination. Customer service was dealt with through the same, physical, channels. This has changed radically, with the introduction of first the phone, then the web, and now social media, as sales and support channels. Managing t...

Pages