According to new academic research people check their smartphones 85 times a day and use them for a daily average of 5 hours. The study, from Nottingham Trent University, also found that much of the time most users don’t even realize they are doing it, with consumers spending twice as much time on their phones as they think.For many, their phone is the first thing they...
When it comes to customer service, consumers want the ability to contact you through their channel of choice and get the same positive experience - receiving fast, accurate and consistent answers - however they get in touch.Delivering consistency is therefore important to both customers and the organization itself. Inconsistency frustrates consumers as they cannot be sure that they’ve...
In an era where social media, self-service and chat are being increasingly used for customer service, it is easy for organisations to overlook email or to not provide the channel with sufficient resources. Yet new research from analysts Contact Babel in The 2015 UK Contact Centre Decision-Maker’s Guide emphasise its importance while evaluating cost and time taken to answer...
Thanks to the internet, retail is a global industry, with companies now facing competition from peers around the world. As we’ve discussed before, this means that a focus on the customer is vital – with businesses needing to understand what consumers want and provide them with a tailored experience that meets their exact requirements. At the same time as the internet has...
As we approach the holiday shopping season, retailers are getting ready for their busiest time of the year. So at Eptica we thought it would be a good time to look at how they perform when it comes to the customer experience. The 2015 Eptica Retail Customer Experience Study therefore evaluated 500 U.S. retailers, in 15 sectors, on their ability to provide answers to 10 questions...
Consumers are sending an increasing number of questions to companies, across more and more channels. This rising volume of customer interactions, covering everything from questions about products and post-sales queries, to complaints and positive feedback, threatens to overwhelm many organizations.The numbers are vast. Over 1 million people view tweets about customer service...
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.
The spread of digital customer service channels, from email and chat to social media, can provide organizations with significant benefits. According to McKinsey, if done well it boosts customer satisfaction by 33% while reducing contact center call volume, and generating savings of 25-30%. However, the complexity of multiple digital channels and increasingly...
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...
Between different countries and demographic groups there is an enormous variation in which channels consumers prefer to use to contact organizations, particularly for customer service. In this multichannel world, companies need to offer all relevant channels, but also have to understand which best fits their requirements of their key demographic groups, so they ensure they deliver superior service...