Customers are becoming ever-more demanding, across every channel, while competition has never been fiercer. All of these factors mean that the customer experience is now central to winning and retaining business for organizations of all sizes. Customer service is now everyone’s job, from the CEO downwards. But who should be in overall charge of ensuring that the organization...
The internet and ecommerce have transformed how we research, buy and communicate across a wide range of activities from shopping and choosing holidays, purchasing insurance to applying for a mortgage. Characterized by disruptive internet giants such as Google and Amazon, this shift has fundamentally changed customer service, but also brought its own challenges around confidentiality, protecti...
The amount of time – and range of activities – that consumers carry out online continues to grow. It is now the first port of call for everything from shopping and banking, to researching and buying insurance policies, switching telecoms supplier or booking a holiday. No wonder that in 2014 UK ecommerce sales broke the £100 billion barrier for the first time, making up ...
Last week’s Gartner Customer Strategies & Technologies Summit in London provided a perfect opportunity to take the pulse of customer service and customer experience, and to look at future trends that companies need to start preparing for now. The two day event was certainly packed with presentations, and well attended by both vendors and end users, demonstrating the vital ...
One of the biggest complaints consumers have when they raise an issue with a company is that customer service agents don’t show sufficient understanding or sympathy for their plight. In contrast, when agents apologize and demonstrate that they realize that there is a problem that is causing inconvenience, customer satisfaction rises. This is even the case if the issue can’t be solved...
A research in 2014 from the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) has found that retail is the most complained-about sector in the country. According to the Index, consumer satisfaction with the overall retail sector declined significantly, dropping by 3.5%
Asia is the world leader when it comes to smartphone usage. In fact, Asian consumers are more likely to use their smartphones to get online, rather than a computer.
Social media has significantly changed the customer service landscape, rebalancing the relationship between consumers and brands and providing a public forum for complaints to be made.
Fast access to the right information, in the right form, is an essential part of delivering excellent customer service. Whether it is through self-service systems on the web, or providing agents on the phone, email, social media or chat channels with consistent and accurate information, knowledge is the cornerstone of a successful customer experience.A company’s knowledge base...
The reputation of banks with consumers has suffered a dramatic fall in recent years. Branch closures, misselling cases such as those around PPI and, of course, the part that banks played in the financial crisis have all contributed to low consumer trust in the sector. At the same time the UK government has made it much easier for consumers to switch providers, attracting new entrants to the m...