Communications technology is now central to everyone’s lives. Whereas twenty years ago most people just had a fixed telephone line, today consumers rely on a combination of mobile phones, broadband, and wireless data, to communicate with the world, work remotely and stay in touch with loved ones. As the importance of telecoms has grown, so has the significance of the customer service...
Customer experience is becoming the vital differentiator for organizations around the world. The combination of more demanding consumers, greater competition and the need to provide service across many more channels has made delivering a superior customer experience central to business success.Companies operating in the Asia Pacific region also face a number of local challenges. The large variety ...
Earlier this year Eptica released the 2015 UK Multichannel Customer Experience Study. Covering 10 sectors, it researched the strength of the customer experience delivered by 100 leading brands across the web, email, Twitter and chat channels. Some of the key findings were that:On average UK companies could answer less than half (48%) of all questions as...
Last week UK government body HMRC said that it would spend an additional £45m to improve customer service for taxpayers. The money will be used to employ 3,000 more customer-facing staff, with a further 2,000 existing employees moved temporarily to help with the forthcoming tax credits deadline. The investment follows figures which showed that over a quarter (27.5%) ...
Customers are becoming ever-more demanding, across every channel, while competition has never been fiercer. All of these factors mean that the customer experience is now central to winning and retaining business for organizations of all sizes. Customer service is now everyone’s job, from the CEO downwards. But who should be in overall charge of ensuring that the organization...
The move online has transformed how consumers interact with businesses, and opens up completely new markets to companies. However, as you cannot physically see your customer it can make it more difficult to understand them and their motivations, and consequently provide a personalized customer experience. For example, the degree of formality customers expect in written and verbal communications...
The internet and ecommerce have transformed how we research, buy and communicate across a wide range of activities from shopping and choosing holidays, purchasing insurance to applying for a mortgage. Characterized by disruptive internet giants such as Google and Amazon, this shift has fundamentally changed customer service, but also brought its own challenges around confidentiality, protecti...
The amount of time – and range of activities – that consumers carry out online continues to grow. It is now the first port of call for everything from shopping and banking, to researching and buying insurance policies, switching telecoms supplier or booking a holiday. No wonder that in 2014 UK ecommerce sales broke the £100 billion barrier for the first time, making up ...
Last week’s Gartner Customer Strategies & Technologies Summit in London provided a perfect opportunity to take the pulse of customer service and customer experience, and to look at future trends that companies need to start preparing for now. The two day event was certainly packed with presentations, and well attended by both vendors and end users, demonstrating the vital ...
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...