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...
The UK is currently suffering its wettest winter since records began. Huge tracts of land are already under water, notably in the Somerset Levels, and the Thames has now flooded in Berkshire and Surrey. The main rail line between Devon and Cornwall has been swept away and thousands of cars have been damaged by being driven through floods across the UK. No matter where you are, this persistent incl...
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...
New figures show that retail sales in December increased at the fastest rate for nine years. Statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found that sales in December were up 5.3% on 2012, and 2.6% greater than November 2013. 12% of sales were through the online channel. Separate research from the IMRG-CapGemini eRetail Sales Index show that UK shoppers spent £91 billion online in...
1st January 2014 saw a major change in the utility sector, as new Ofgem regulations came into force. Designed to create a clearer market, suppliers are now limited to offering eight tariffs to customers (four each for electricity and gas), which will be structured more simply. The aim is to make it easier to compare prices from different suppliers and therefore encourage switching to ensure consum...
Citizens today are increasingly embracing digital channels, such as the web, email and social media. Led by central government and its Digital by Default agenda, the public sector is therefore changing how it communicates to match the needs of citizens, patients and other audiences. More and more services can now be completed online, from renewing a tax disc to registering children for school.Digi...
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...
As companies expand, delivering the same, personal, high quality service is vital to their continued growth. Customer service teams can be spread across multiple locations and have to cover multiple brands and a greater range of products. This means that traditional methods of collecting and sharing knowledge (such as physical folders or handbooks) no longer provide fast answers to staff, leading ...
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 ...
An ever-increasing amount of customer contact is coming through digital channels such as email, social media and the web. Companies need to understand these queries and respond quickly and accurately if they are to win and retain customers. However an estimated 80% of this contact is unstructured (not organised in a pre-defined format), making it difficult and time consuming to analyse and act upo...