The financial services industry is currently facing major issues when it comes to customer service. Following scandals such as the misselling of products such as Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and major technology problems at RBS, consumer confidence is at an all time low. No wonder that an increasing number of customers are looking to take their business elsewhere.As part of its remit to prot...
With the Paralympics now upon us, the UK’s exciting Summer of world-class sport is continuing to grip the nation. Looking back to the Olympics, a huge part of the event’s success were the Gamesmakers, the 70,000 volunteers who made sure that everything ran smoothly. Spectators, athletes and officials all praised their energy, enthusiasm and willingness to go the extra mile – desp...
First Contact Resolution is a key metric for customer service teams. After all if you can satisfactorily deal with an incoming query or complaint quickly, without needing to follow up then it benefits everyone. The customer is happy as they have their answer and don’t need to escalate their query while the contact centre can close the file without needing to call back, delivering an efficien...
The recent outbreak of sunshine might have driven it from our minds, but the UK suffered from truly awful weather at the start of the Summer. The constant rain has had a real impact on consumers visiting physical shops, according to a report from the British Retail Consortium and data company Springboard.They report a decline of 2.3% in the number of shoppers visiting high streets, shopping centre...
Good customer service should have two aims. Obviously the first is to satisfy customer questions and solve any problems that they may have. Failing to do this means you will lose customers and revenue as well as negatively impacting your brand.The second, and ultimately even more important, objective should be to use customer service information to improve your products and services. Customer serv...
Web chat has been around for a while. However, despite this it has yet to really achieve mass market uptake. This is due to a number of factors. As it uses real agents to answer queries cost is perceived as high, while there has been confusion between live chat and over hyped pre-programmed chatbots. Finally, companies have worried that customers will be annoyed by pop-up chat windows appearing wh...
Anyone looking to convince their company of the importance of social customer service can point to a growing library of case studies. Whether it is how O2 has used social media to turn a customer service negative into a positive or on the flipside how Australian retailer Gasp failed to engage with a disgruntled customer, there are more and more stories that can be used to justify the necessary inv...
Eptica’s work with the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) has been shortlisted for two categories in the prestigious Customer Contact Association (CCA) Excellence Awards - The Technology Partner and Best Use of Self Service.The nominations to the shortlist recognise the improved service levels and cost savings achieved by the NHS BSA since implementing its Sherlock project which...
electricity (Photo credit: Terry Freedman) The utility sector has often struggled with customer service but new figures seem to show that performance is improving. The latest quarterly statistics from Consumer Focus found that overall complaints about the six major energy companies fell by 7% in the first quarter of 2012. This meant that the average number of complaints was 77 per 100,000 cu...
In an era where new channels such as social media and mobile are receiving huge attention, email customer service can sometimes feel a little last century. After all as a channel that has been around for a while, companies must surely have implemented a strategy to successfully cope with email – and nowadays people are all migrating to other channels aren’t they?Unfortunately for anyon...