The internet has fundamentally changed how humans operate. The fact that we can access information and services at the click of our mouse has reduced our willingness to be patient or to wait for responses. If consumers can’t immediately find the information they are looking for on your web page they are likely to surf over to the competition – so ensuring you can combat this growing im...
With schools having broken up, the summer holiday season is now very much upon us. And with customers now having a bewildering range of destinations and providers to choose from (yak trekking in Mongolia anyone?) and an enormous range of user generated reviews, the pressure is on travel companies to deliver the highest levels of customer service.So, it is interesting to see how travel companies fa...
The growth of social media over the past few years has been phenomenal, providing completely new ways of communicating for both consumers and brands. By giving everyone a voice it opens up a fresh customer service channel that companies need to embrace.Whether you like it or not consumers will be talking about your company and its products –and you need to join the conversation. So how are t...
A large number of UK companies are still failing badly when it comes to online customer service. That’s the headline finding of a major new report – The 2011 Eptica UK Multichannel Customer Service Study, which found a chasm between the best and worst performers in delivering service to consumers.The study surveyed 100 leading UK organisations in multiple sectors, analysing their abili...
New research has found that more than three times as many Indians use social media for customer service compared to the UK and US. In the study, by analysts Ovum, nearly four in ten Indian consumers had embraced social media to raise customer service queries – in contrast, only 12 per cent of UK and US consumers have done so. Indian consumers both used it positively (to promote good se...
It is an obvious thing to say, but companies need to make it as simple as possible for potential customers to buy their products or services. For example retailers with limited or confusing opening hours wouldn’t survive long nor would travel agents that didn’t give a clear price.The same is true when it comes to customer service – providing a clear, straightforward and consisten...
Recent research from OFCOM has highlighted the number of complaints customers have with telecoms companies. The regulator itself receives an average of 450 complaints every day, covering everything from mis-selling to billing errors. And this figure obviously doesn’t cover complaints made to telecoms companies themselves that don’t get escalated to OFCOM.Given the fast moving and compl...
Pretty much every business today operates in a multi-channel environment. Even purchases that are completed in the High Street have often been extensively researched on the websites of retailers, product manufacturers, competitors and review sites.To meet this need Google is piloting a new Analytics feature called Multi-Channel Funnels which maps all the marketing channels that impact the final sa...
Pretty much all customer facing companies have woken up to the power of social media and the new channels it provides for customer service. Lots of organisations are monitoring conversations on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, but a high proportion are not integrating it with their overall customer service strategy.In many cases the customer service side of managing Facebook pages or responding ...