Customer Service

RSPCA and Eptica help Anne the Elephant say goodbye to the circus

Published on: November 14, 2011
Author: Epticablog

It has just been announced that the former owners of Britain's last circus elephant are to be prosecuted for animal cruelty – and customer service software has played its part in helping secure a better future for Anne the elephant.When footage of Anne being beaten and kicked emerged on YouTube in March 2011, The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) received hun...

Moving telecoms customer service online

Published on: November 11, 2011
Author: Epticablog

Telecoms companies have historically had a poor reputation for customer service, something that our own research unfortunately verifies. Previously with little difference between service levels amongst telcos, customers didn’t have much choice, so there was little incentive to invest.However this is changing as new entrants and technologies disrupt the traditional telecoms market. On the bac...

HSBC and social customer service

Published on: November 09, 2011
Author: Epticablog

Last week’s IT problems at HSBC demonstrate how quickly a customer service issue can develop in the age of social media. On Friday afternoon the bank suffered an IT outage on its mainframe which affected online banking, ATM and some customers using debit cards in stores. While the problems lasted just over 2 hours, Friday afternoons are amongst the busiest time for banks, with HSBC’s 1...

Online shopping around the world

Published on: November 07, 2011
Author: Epticablog

New research demonstrates wide variations between online buying behaviour across the globe. The survey, from Pitney Bowes, asked 10,000 consumers from 10 countries about their online shopping habits and preferences and uncovered some interesting differences.Overall 93% of consumers had shopped online, 49% in the last 30 days, showing the mass market appeal of ecommerce around the world. In the UK,...

Five tips for improving management of customer complaints

Published on: November 02, 2011
Author: Epticablog

If you needed a reminder of the importance of customer service to the bottom line, this week’s £2 million fine for utility npower for mishandling customer complaints demonstrates the financial cost of poor customer service processes. The punishment, levied by energy regulator Ofgem, follows a £2.5 million fine for British Gas in July 2011 for similar issues. In its judgement...

AirAsia mobile customer service app is a best seller

Published on: October 27, 2011
Author: Epticablog

The increasing use of mobile phones for a wide range of activities beyond voice calls is being extensively written about at the moment. A report from the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) and Cap Gemini, for example, has found that the proportion of mobile based online shopping in the UK has jumped by more than 800 per cent over the past year. Over the same period in the US the mobile ...

Spare a thought for BlackBerry customer service

Published on: October 25, 2011
Author: Epticablog

If you work in customer service, you’ve got to feel a bit of sympathy for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) after the customer service disaster that befell it this month.  A European outage gradually turned into global disruption, leaving countless users with delayed or non-existent access to email, text and the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service. The problem lasted several...

Having a chat

Published on: October 21, 2011
Author: Epticablog

While it has been around for many years, live web chat is definitely an underused channel by companies. Despite the fact that more and more people are using chat channels such as instant messaging or Skype, companies have shied away from deploying it, particularly for customer service. Mainly this is down to the perceived cost of chat, as it requires a real agent to answer questions online. T...

Dealing with financial services complaints – top 5 tips

Published on: October 19, 2011
Author: Epticablog

Figures just released by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) show that the number of complaints made by consumers increased by 24% in the third quarter. 31,386 complaints were made to the FOS, which deals with issues escalated by consumers beyond their financial services provider, between July and September 2011.Commentators have highlighted factors such as the worsening economic situation for t...

Eptica Awards celebrate customer service success

Published on: October 18, 2011
Author: Epticablog

Eptica’s International Customer Service Summit highlighted customer service excellence through the second annual Eptica Customer Service Innovation awards.  Dixons, AirAsia and Ageas were amongst the companies to receive awards for service transformation based around Eptica’s multichannel customer interaction management software. Winners achieved outstanding results in the ca...

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