National Customer Service Week (NCSW) will soon be celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. Running between October 3-7, it highlights the importance of customer service to every organization, and provides the opportunity to learn from best practice and to celebrate success across the sector.
Forrester has just published its 2016 US Customer Experience Index, providing an update on the state of CX across multiple sectors. Based on consumer research into how customer experience strengthens loyalty, it shows both individual company scores and how the wider economy is performing. Looking through the research, I can see four key trends for CX and customer service professionals...
Businesses understand that improving the customer experience has a direct impact on revenue generation. Happier customers are more loyal, will spend more and recommend your company to their friends.Business success depends on a wide variety of factors and it can be hard to isolate customer experience in dollar figures.
At a time when consumers want a fast, seamless experience, knowledge is at the heart of delivering excellent customer service. For example, Forrester found that 55% of US adults say they are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. The same applies within the contact center – if they are to solve customer queries over the telephone...
People now spend more time online on their smartphones rather than on their PCs or laptops. This is fundamentally reshaping how individuals have conversations with brands – they now have the ability to get in touch at any time, wherever they are, and they expect a fast response. Ten years ago if you experienced poor service in a store you’d have to wait to get home ...
The combination of growing competition and more demanding consumers means that customer experience is now recognized by businesses everywhere as crucial for success. Analyst reports back this up – research from Forrester found that companies with superior customer experience demonstrate improved revenue growth, while Gartner analysis predicted that by 2016 89% of...
With an increasing amount of our time spent online, company websites are now more often than not the first port of call for consumers looking for information from brands. Being able to find answers to their questions quickly is therefore a vital part of the customer experience. According to the latest Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study, the good news is that most companies understand
At heart, humans are social beings. This has a major impact on every interaction we have with the people around us. Think of the most basic transactions – the ones you remember most are those where you either had an extremely positive or negative emotional experience. Take visiting the grocery store, if the cashier was extremely helpful, asked about your day and took time to show that...
Forrester recently reported that 69% of people still want to contact companies through email. However, UK brands are struggling to cope with the emails they receive, with performance overall worsening according to the latest Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study.Email volumes are increasing year-on-year, and in some sectors (such as retail), email makes up30% of...
Customer experience is important to every industry, but particularly vital for retail. Fierce competition, exacerbated by the rise of ecommerce, means it is increasingly important for retail companies to differentiate themselves. And with many stores often selling the same products, customer experience is a more appealing way of differentiating than competing on price...