Staff turnover has always been a problem in a lot of customer service teams. While the UK average employee turnover rate is approximately 15%, in contact centres it averages around 25%. That means one in four agents leaves every year - although for some contact centres turnover can be as much as 60%.One of the key impacts of staff turnover is increased training costs. On average, new agents receiv...
Navigating phone menus when you call a contact centre is a source of much frustration for consumers. Done well, the concept of phone menus should help improve the customer experience. You’ll be directed to the best agent to deal with your enquiry and they will be able to use the information you’ve typed in to give a head start on solving your problem, without needing to transfer you ar...
In an ever more competitive economic environment, businesses in every sector are looking for ways to increase sales and unlock additional revenues. There are many ways to do this, including raising the spend of existing customers, upselling, avoiding abandoned online shopping carts and delivering a superior experience to avoid customer defections.With its combination of real time response, and per...
Efficiently delivering the right customer experience is the number one priority for every organisation. But in today’s complex, fast-moving world this can be challenging. The number of contact channels is constantly increasing, competition has never been fiercer and the growth of mobile devices means customer service has to operate 24x7, providing the perfect experience quickly and efficient...
Businesses today operate globally, but need to provide a local service if they are to deliver the customer experience that consumers rightly demand. That means providing information, answers and support in local languages, at the time that customers want it, and of course through their channel of choice.Managing global customer service is therefore a challenge, particularly for web-based businesse...
How will consumers interact with brands in the near future? What channels will they use and what sort of experience are they looking for? A new report, ‘The coming era of on-demand marketing’, from consultants McKinsey aims to shed light on these questions and to help companies prepare themselves for this changing world.Essentially McKinsey believes that emerging technologies will mean...
Insurers have traditionally been slower than other industries when it comes to establishing themselves on social media. Worries about breaking regulations mean that they have been wary about launching onto Twitter and Facebook. Backing this up, own 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study found that just one insurer out of the UK’s top 10 had clear links displayed to Twitter and Fa...
The customer experience has never been more important to businesses. Channels such as social media enable customers to instantly share their views on brands with the world while advances in web and mobile technology mean that consumers now demand instant answers and a superior experience whatever device or channel they are using.Being able to balance these pressures while operating efficiently and...
This month we’re celebrating two years of publishing the Eptica Customer Experience blog, which began back in April 2011.From the start the aim has been to provide updates and opinions on the customer service market, highlight best practice and show how customer needs are changing. And the market has definitely been transformed. We’ve moved from multichannel to omnichannel and new (at ...
Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are radically changing how customers interact with companies. Rather than being tied to their PC consumers are now demanding access to information anywhere and anytime, both for research and making final purchases. Businesses therefore need a mobile strategy to support consumer needs, with a seamless, high quality experience vital to winning and retai...