Traditional Telephone Customer Service – Still Struggles to Satisfy

Survey Results Highlight Challenges Facing Customer Service

The current economic crisis and the importance of customer satisfaction and retention, research conducted by YouGov PLC paints a worrying picture of consumers perception of customer service in the UK.

Customer dissatisfaction has become the norm!

Key FindingsIssues aren't resolved or questions are not answered

• 48% Give Up Using Telephone Customer Service

Experience with customer service

• Only 20% Left feeling satisfied• Only 8% feel valued as a customer

One third of respondents stated they now expect to get poor service when they call a company’s customer service call centre

Only one in twelve consumers reported feeling “valued as a customer” following their contact with customer services.

Urgent or serious issues are on the increase

Contact centres face more complex and emotionally charged calls

Errors Increase Demand

• 76% contacted customer service because of an error made by the company

Avoidable Contact – Organisations can avoid this by taking greater care with their internal policies and procedures

• 53% stated that avoidable contact had increased over the last 12 months

• 34% don't get issues resolved first time

Call centres represent a significant expense the continual loop of unresolved issues only serve to create additional expense.

Businesses need to consider the potential impact on revenue of upsetting and possibly loosing customers by not resolving their issues

Potential Increase in Cost –Coupled with a Decrease in Revenue

Human Contact

• 67% of respondents prefer communicating with a human for Urgent Issues

• 45% prefer On-line self help systems for non urgent issues

An Emotional Issue

• 26% rated call centre hold ups as their number one

• 1 in 4 loose their temper with an agent during a customer service call

• ¼ postpone dealing with an issue because they cant face dealing with customer service

Companies Take Note

Satisfaction with a contact centre has become the leading indicator of customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendations findings show that 94% of satisfied customer will do business with the same company again and 91% will recommend them to others

Only 62% of customers that had a bad customer service experience said they would continue as a customer and only 39% would recommend the company afterwards

Generation Y

• 25-34 Years olds is seen as the “me, right now” generation with a thirst for instant communication and hyper-efficient service, patience is not a character trait

• Generation Y are most likely to be frustrated or annoyed with poor customer service and are also most likely to switch, they are also the most influential in terms of word of mouth

• Generation Y represents not only represents the largest of the demographic subsets but also the future of customer service

Systems & Procedures

• 29% of an agents time talking to customers• 71% split between:-– Entering Data– Making notes– Seeking Advice– Reading Numerous Information Screens

Companies Worst Effected by Poor Customer Support

33%

30%

30%

27%26%

24%

22%

18%15%

Sales Utility provider

Retailer

Mobile Phone Company

Bank

Internet Provider

Insurance Company

Credit Card Company

Cable or Satellite TV Company

Home Phone Company

WhosOn Addressing the Issues Raised

• WhosOn is a software application that enables the online engagement of website visitors in real-time

• Providing real time assistance with live chat helps improve customer support and online conversions

• Inbuilt visitor tracking provides invaluable analytics to identify and refine your online offering

Live Chat – Improving Customer Support

• An Alternative to telephone support– Email and Telephone support have traditionally

been the norm in a contact centre environment– Consumers are demanding more and more ways to

contact an organisation and gain an instantaneous response

Live Chat provides a preferred instant two way communication enabling enquiries to be answered more effectively and in a timely manner

• Generation Y– 25-34 Year Olds “me, right now” demand instant

communication, hyper efficient service– The future of customer service

Live Chat provides a preferred method of communication for Generation Y as an alternative to phone or email.A generation used to instant messaging, status updates and SMS Text these are the early adopters of Live Chat but they will also form part of the largest customer base

• Less Prone to Errors– Errors Increase costs adding to avoidable contact– Avoidable contact increasing

Live Chat helps reduce avoidable contact, clear instructions are written within a chat window an end user can request a copy of the chat transcript to refer back to should they need to in the futureAgents can push specific web pages or send documents directly within a chatAgents can use remote control capabilities if required to take control of an end users PC so they can assist directly with support enquiries or help with form completionAgents can easily access chat histories for any returning visitors instantaneously gaining an insight into the particular end user request without having to access an alternative system, improving the relationship with the customer in real-time

• Improving Productivity & Reducing Costs– Unresolved issues increase call centre costs

Live Chat helps by improving staff productivity not only can agents continue to take calls they can also handle chats at the same timeUnlike a standard call an agent can handle multiple chats at once enabling contact centres to reduce wait times ultimately improving customer satisfaction

• Human Contact– People prefer human contact

Live Chat helps it is a two way text based conversation between a physical operator and an end user.Unlike a knowledge base or FAQ system end users are able to get specific answers to specific questions

• No Emoticon– Contact centres facing increasingly emotionally charged

calls– Customers loosing tempers– Support agents also become unhappy

Live chat helps as emoticons can’t be expressed as easily via a text based conversationThis also helps raise employee moral with the contact centre as they are less exposed to the frustrations expressed by customers, often found during a standard telephone call

• System Integration– Agents when they have finished a call have to record the data gained in various

systems often referring to scribbled inaccurate notes– They may need to seek Advice or gain literature from various sources

Live chat helps it can integrate with selected CRM packages instantly creating new records or adding to an existing record Rather than referring to different sets of documentation using the knowledge base within the live chat console operators can access the information they require in the form of canned responsesLive chat gives the ability for agents to insert files or images and send these directly to the end usersThere is less data repetition chats can be saved printed or archived into the CRM these can then be accessed at a later date or when a visitor returns to the site

Summary

Any organisation running a service desk in a customer support environment should begin to look further at Live Chat as a way of improving customer support and improving internal processes. Once implemented organisations can significantly reduce their costs and more importantly improve customer service.

For more information about WhosOn please visit.www.whoson.com