Web chat is growing rapidly in popularity with studies consistently showing that this service is highly valued by customers. For example, a 2013 survey by eConsultancy found that web chat had the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, scoring 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone. Speed (79%) and efficiency (46%) were the top reasons given for its popularity. A ...
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...
In an increasingly competitive economy, delivering the best customer experience is crucial for organisations looking to win new business and retain existing customers. However it has never been more difficult. Customers are demanding more, across an increasing range of channels and are swift to punish those that don’t deliver – either via social media or by moving their business elsewh...
There’s widespread agreement that customer satisfaction is vital to every organisation. A Gartner poll found that 80% of executives thought it was more important than three years ago, with 95% seeing it as the key way of differentiating from competitors. Where there’s less togetherness is how you measure the customer experience. For example, many of the traditional metrics used...
We’re now well into the Christmas shopping season, with Cyber Monday behind us and both retailers and analysts releasing their first figures for sales. This seems to show a strong start for many retailers, helped by promotions around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. John Lewis said online sales for the week ending 30 November were 35.7% higher than last year, while ChannelAdvisor reported that...
Across the world customer satisfaction is getting worse – and younger generations are saying goodbye to the phone channel. These are just two of the headline findings from Dimension Data’s 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report. The 16th edition of the report is based on a worldwide survey of 817 companies in 11 industries and 79 countries. It paints a bleak picture of ...
Attempting to predict the future provides some fascinating insights and can help planning, whatever industry you are in. This is especially true when it comes to customer service, as it often feels that we’re in the midst of constant change. Thinking further ahead gives the chance to add perspective and to make more gradual, planned steps on the road to the future.So I read with interest a r...
For those of us that work in customer service, the need to invest in the skills, technology and processes to deliver a superior customer experience can appear obvious. Happier customers means greater retention, more sales and therefore more profits. So why won’t the board sign off on that new system/increased training budget? It all comes down to the business case. What seems a no-brain...
Delivering a straightforward yet engaging customer experience can be a major challenge in complex, highly regulated markets such as insurance. Companies need to make sure that customers understand what they are buying, but at the same time ensure they comply with stringent regulations. And while the majority of the industry has moved to internet-based selling of insurance there can be an enormous ...
Modern consumer electronics are incredibly complex – essentially specialised computers that rely on the latest software to function. They need to interact with an increasing number of other devices around them to provide consumers with the experience they are looking for. And to compete with other vendors, manufacturers have to continually develop their functionality, which often means updat...