All brands should now understand the importance of social media to customer service. For example, over two thirds (67%) of consumers say they’ve used social media for customer service, rather than phoning or visiting a company website, according to research from J.D. Power. Over 1 million people view tweets about customer service every week. However, many companies are still...
With the holidays now nearly upon us, spare a thought for customer service teams who have to keep working right up to, and through, Christmas itself. For retailers, the gap between fulfilling last minute orders and the start of the sales is now measured in hours, while consumer electronics manufacturers have to be ready to deal with any queries from customers trying to get their new...
We’re now into the busiest time of year for retail, with contact centers facing huge volumes of incoming queries from consumers on the phone, email, Twitter, Facebook and chat channels. This means that even if companies deploy effective web self-service systems to provide consumers with fast, consistent answers to their most commonly asked questions...
Delivering outstanding customer service is central to every business, but is especially important to midsize organizations, which may not have the brand recognition or marketing budgets of their larger competitors. These companies, who typically have between 100-999 employees, tend to have fewer resources to dedicate to implementing new systems and may not have the experience of deploying...
Recent research from charity Citizens Advice found major differences between how UK utilities handle customer service. The top performing utility (SSE) received just 47 complaints per 100,000 customers, yet another had 944 – over 20 times more. A further four companies had over 400 complaints per 100,000, within the three months between April and June 2015.
In the past contact centers were often viewed as a cost center, meaning that the primary goal of companies was to run them as efficiently as possible while still responding to customers competently. As companies are becoming more customer-centric, this is approach is changing. Now businesses realize that they need to use the customer experience as a differentiating factor if they want...
Customer service teams are currently faced with multiple challenges. Consumers are asking an increasing number of questions and are demanding faster service, across more and more channels. At the same time budgets for coping with this growing volume of interactions are often flat or even shrinking. So how can companies deliver faster service to more queries, while improving efficiency?
In competitive markets, customer service is often the most important differentiator. This is especially true if companies are selling similar products, at similar prices – and for service businesses such as utilities and financial services where there is no physical product to create a differentiation. When customer service is the main source of competitive advantage, it’s essential to...
When customer service first rose to prominence within organisations it was straightforward to define. It was a physical department, normally including a call centre, that dealt with all incoming customer communications (mainly via telephone and letter), and provided help and support. As the number of channels used by customers began to expand, the web, email...
Twenty years ago, the majority of banking was carried out face-to-face through an extensive branch network and most consumers remained with the same bank for much of their lives.Three factors have dramatically changed this. Firstly, new channels such as the internet have transformed how consumers interact with their banks, while increasing the range of services that they can carry out themsel...