Report: One bad experience with customer support reps can crush your business
Conducted by Ovum Research on behalf of LogMeIn, the survey comprises of 315 contact centre managers and 400 customers across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It polled the respondents on their view into the needs and frustrations of mobile customers.
It found that 48 per cent of customers surveyed stated the ability to reach the right representative has worsened over the last two years, with 76 per cent having stopped doing business with a brand following a bad customer service experience.
This indicates that although businesses are fully aware of new behavioural trends among customers, not all of them are tailoring their customer service experience to match customers' needs. In addition, there's a significant disconnect between what today's mobile, always-connected customers have come to expect from customer service and what contact centres are delivering.
LogMeIn chief managing officer, Sean Ford, said today's highly mobile customers are empowered to seek out support from multiple touch points and have come to expect a response through those channels in minutes, not hours.
"Yet contact centres are not equipped to provide the fast resolutions their customer's desire," he said. Ovum senior analyst, Aphrodite Brinsmead, said this report provides an insightful view into the needs and frustrations of mobile customers, as well as gives contact centre managers the opportunity to invest in the correct tools, prioritise their support channels, and navigate through this rapidly changing customer service landscape.
"Businesses need to adapt their service tools to match customer needs and improve access to live agents. Contact centres should invest in technology to understand cross-channel behaviour and link customers' digital interactions with their profiles and case records.
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"By optimising online support and guiding customers to the right channel for their issues, businesses will be able to improve resolution rates and customer satisfaction," Brinsmead claimed.
Some of the other findings from the study include:
- Live chat is a promising channel for support interactions as the use of email and Web chat has grown with the number of customers using live chat and email having more than doubled over the last two years - The Internet of Things shows potential for technical resolutions as contact centre managers are familiar with the benefits of connected devices and are keen to resolve issues remotely. - Customers look to Web and mobile for answers first -- In A/NZ, 59 per cent of customers said they use the Web to look for information always or most of the time before contacting customer service. However, only five per cent of managers believe that their customers frequently use the web before calling, showing a big discrepancy. - Managers understand that wait times are an issue with top priorities for 2015, including agent training and improving response times.
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