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%) ...
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 ...
The reputation of banks with consumers has suffered a dramatic fall in recent years. Branch closures, misselling cases such as those around PPI and, of course, the part that banks played in the financial crisis have all contributed to low consumer trust in the sector. At the same time the UK government has made it much easier for consumers to switch providers, attracting new entrants to the m...
Customer service directors face increasing challenges. They have to deal with a growing number of queries, calls, emails and tweets from consumers, who demand the highest levels of service, irrespective of channel. At the same time, they have to balance their budgets and ensure that they are delivering value to the business through efficient and cost-effective operations.Meeting these two objectiv...
The rise of internet and digital channels has radically changed how people research and buy insurance. It’s now extremely simple for consumers to shop around and get online quotes before renewing their policies – especially since the rise of price comparison websites.
Retailers face growing market challenges. Despite the UK climbing out of recession, consumer confidence is still fragile and likely to remain so in the face of a number of uncertainties on the horizon; a potential hung parliament, eurozone worries and interest rate rises. It’s not surprising that shoppers are still price sensitive, and are happy to move to rivals.
Digital channels bring new opportunities and challenges to retail businesses. Unlike in a physical shop it can be difficult to predict demand, making it more complex to ensure that you can scale to meet customer needs. Fail to deliver the right experience and consumers will simply move elsewhere, reducing sales and impacting profits.This is particularly true at Christmas. It may be the busiest tim...
Every business understands that today’s customers are demanding more – and are happy to move to the competition if they don’t receive what they are looking for. However, breaking these demands down into specific areas can be difficult, so those involved with customer experience should take a look at a recent Forbes blog post by customer service expert Micah Solomon as it gives mo...
When interacting with organisations, customers value convenience, speed and consistency above all. Self-service systems deliver in all three of these areas, which is leading to their widespread adoption on the web. But self-service isn’t stopping there. Advances in speech recognition and voice to text technology mean that companies are beginning to look beyond websites to applying self-servi...