Eptica

A Happy Christmas for retailers?

Published on: January 22, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

New figures show that retail sales in December increased at the fastest rate for nine years. Statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found that sales in December were up 5.3% on 2012, and 2.6% greater than November 2013. 12% of sales were through the online channel. Separate research from the IMRG-CapGemini eRetail Sales Index show that UK shoppers spent £91 billion online in...

Why understanding your customers is key for 2014

Published on: January 20, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Analyst group Forrester has just released its 2014 predictions for customer service. It lists 12 trends that companies should be paying attention to, if they want to engage with customers and deliver the right experience for them in the year ahead.These trends are organised into four topics:1.    Deliver pain free customer service Covering areas such as omnichannel, mobile and stand...

Looking at the future of insurance

Published on: January 15, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

2014 promises to be a pivotal year for the UK insurance sector. Competition has never been greater, particularly when it comes to motor, household and travel insurance. More and more people are buying their policies through price comparison sites, rather than direct or via brokers, bringing down margins. Loyalty is at an all time low – 38% of UK motor insurance customers switched provider at...

Can customer service cope with travel chaos?

Published on: January 13, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Recent poor weather on both sides of the Atlantic has caused widespread disruption, with flooding in the UK and subzero temperatures in the US continuing to make the front pages. Many people have been forced to leave their homes or had to live without heating or power.The weather has also had a major impact on travel, with trains cancelled and flights delayed or re-routed. Back in early December, ...

Putting the spark into energy customer service

Published on: January 09, 2014
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

1st January 2014 saw a major change in the utility sector, as new Ofgem regulations came into force. Designed to create a clearer market, suppliers are now limited to offering eight tariffs to customers (four each for electricity and gas), which will be structured more simply. The aim is to make it easier to compare prices from different suppliers and therefore encourage switching to ensure consum...

The last mile – where the retail battle is won or lost

Published on: December 20, 2013
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

By the time you read this most people will have completed the bulk of their Christmas shopping, particularly anyone buying presents online. And the latest figures show that more and more consumers are now purchasing on the Internet. Online sales are still climbing – hitting £10.1 billion in November 2013, according to the IMRG Cap Gemini e-Retail Sales Index, up 10% on 2012.There are a...

Helping the public sector become Digital by Default

Published on: December 18, 2013
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

Citizens today are increasingly embracing digital channels, such as the web, email and social media. Led by central government and its Digital by Default agenda, the public sector is therefore changing how it communicates to match the needs of citizens, patients and other audiences. More and more services can now be completed online, from renewing a tax disc to registering children for school.Digi...

2013 customer service predictions – did they come true?

Published on: December 13, 2013
Author: Eptica

Now is the time of year when everyone looks forward and makes their predictions for 2014. Rather than add my thoughts to this debate, I’ve taken a look at the views of the great and the good from this time last year – and seen how many have actually become a reality. I’ve tried to be as extensive as possible in my research, spanning analysts, publications, experts and other softw...

The top 5 areas where linguistics delivers for customer service teams

Published on: December 11, 2013
Author: Eptica

Customer service teams face growing challenges, particularly around understanding and responding to the growing number of unstructured queries they receive through digital channels such as email, social media and the web. In previous posts we’ve explained what linguistics (the scientific study of language) is and how it re-writes the rules for successful customer service. In this article, I ...

Cyber Monday and customer service

Published on: December 06, 2013
Author: Lloyd Buxton - Business Development

We’re now well into the Christmas shopping season, with Cyber Monday behind us and both retailers and analysts releasing their first figures for sales. This seems to show a strong start for many retailers, helped by promotions around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. John Lewis said online sales for the week ending 30 November were 35.7% higher than last year, while ChannelAdvisor reported that...

Pages