Eptica recently released the 2015 Multichannel Customer Experience Study, looking at the state of customer service provided by leading UK brands across the web, email, Twitter and chat channels. We’ve already discussed the topline findings of the Study in a previous blog, and this week I’d like to focus on the email channel, and how this has changed over time.Despit...
Digital channels bring new opportunities and challenges to retail businesses. Unlike in a physical shop it can be difficult to predict demand, making it more complex to ensure that you can scale to meet customer needs. Fail to deliver the right experience and consumers will simply move elsewhere, reducing sales and impacting profits.This is particularly true at Christmas. It may be the busiest tim...
Delivering superior customer service is an increasing challenge for all. Companies need to cover more and more channels while meeting continually growing demands from consumers, often with no corresponding increase in budgets. No wonder that the temptation can be to re-allocate scarce resources away from traditional channels such as email in order to focus more heavily on the likes of social media...
2014 was an extremely busy year in the customer experience market. The combination of more demanding consumers, new contact channels and increased regulation drove innovation and increased investment in customer service departments as organisations aimed to differentiate themselves from competitors and boost revenues. This increased focus translated into record numbers of visitors to the Epti...
With 144.8 billion emails sent every day, it continues to be a vital channel for customer service. Indeed, the rise of mobile devices, which allow consumers to quickly email wherever they are, means that the number of messages companies receive is actually growing.With many midsize organisations receiving over quarter of a million emails every year, coping with email customer service can be a stru...
Congratulations to Eptica customer Vivastreet, which recently won its category, Classifieds, in the Voted Customer Service of the Year Award (Élu Service Client de l’Année 2015*). Vivastreet operates a network of free, classified ads sites around the world, with the award being given for the performance of its French site (www.vivastreet.com).This is the eighth year that the awards have be...
Customer service is continually evolving. Driven by customer needs and channel expansion the original telephone-only call centres have added new contact methods, such as email, chat and social media, to become multichannel customer engagement centres. However the biggest shift is still ongoing – from a silo-based channel by channel approach to a more integrated, seamless and consistent omnic...
This week’s Eptica Customer Day brought together customer service professionals from multiple sectors, enabling them to compare best practice and learn from each other. It was also a great opportunity to tap into the experience that Eptica has gained working on multichannel customer experience strategies and implementations around the world. My thanks again to all those who attended, i...
It may surprise people that this year marks the 32nd birthday of email, with the original copyright on a program to send and receive emails granted in 1982. That is seven years before Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web while working at CERN. Over the last 30+ years email has changed the way we communicate at work and play with 114.8 billion emails now sent on a daily basis. And this...
Every business understands that today’s customers are demanding more – and are happy to move to the competition if they don’t receive what they are looking for. However, breaking these demands down into specific areas can be difficult, so those involved with customer experience should take a look at a recent Forbes blog post by customer service expert Micah Solomon as it gives mo...