In previous decades an organization’s brand was something it controlled, with how it was perceived in the market driven by expensive advertising and marketing campaigns. The rise of social media and increasingly demanding customers has changed all of this. In highly competitive markets brand reputation and values are built on the experience that consumers receive and share on social media.
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...
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.
In today’s multichannel world, providing service through the channels that customers want has never been more vital. Obviously you need to deliver a consistent experience across every channel, but with resources tight, how you split agent time can be a juggling act.So it is important to understand what channels your customers are likely to use most. There are a number of factors to take into...
Whatever industry an organisation operates in, building mutual understanding between customer and company is at the heart of creating engaged, long-term relationships. However there is a growing gap between the two sides, according to new Eptica research.
Retailers face growing market challenges. Despite the UK climbing out of recession, consumer confidence is still fragile and likely to remain so in the face of a number of uncertainties on the horizon; a potential hung parliament, eurozone worries and interest rate rises. It’s not surprising that shoppers are still price sensitive, and are happy to move to rivals.
Think like a customer and value their time if you want to win and retain their business. These are the headline findings of recent research from Forrester, which looked at changing customer expectations and channel preferences.
Over the past four years Eptica has been benchmarking the UK customer experience by evaluating 100 leading brands on their ability to provide answers to routine questions via the web, email, Twitter and web chat.
Social media has radically changed the relationship between brands and consumers. Today customers increasingly expect companies to quickly answer questions and queries via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, they are accustomed to leaving feedback through reviews sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. In fact, a J.D. Power study found that two thirds of customers who contacted...
If you ask consumers to list their main issues with poor customer service then receiving inaccurate, incomplete or plain wrong answers are normally at or near the top. Whatever channel they contact you through; consumers want a response that shows you understand their query and an answer that solves their problem. However, contacting a company can often resemble a lucky dip, with consumers re...