While phone customer service is “above average” in these sectors, limited interaction choices and inadequate attention to electronic channels drag down overall service performance
Mountain View, Calif. (March 25, 2010) – eGain Communications Corporation (OTC BB: EGAN.OB), the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software for on-site and on-demand deployment, today announced that overall customer service performance of leading healthcare and pharmaceuticals companies in North America was “below average” in 2010.
Overall customer experience score for the healthcare industry was 1.7 and the pharmaceuticals industry was 1.4 out of 4.0. Both sectors performed better in phone customer service with “above average” scores of 2.5 and 2.2 respectively, but fell short in various aspects of customer experience through electronic channels such as email and the web, as well as cross-channel and cross-agent experience.
eGain’s 2010 State of Customer Service Study evaluated multiple aspects of web self-service and contact center customer service of 175 leading enterprises in the U.S. and Canada. These companies are equally distributed across financial services, retail, communications, consumer goods manufacturing, insurance, healthcare products and services, and pharmaceuticals sectors.
Analysts used a “mystery shopping” approach. Customer service performance was measured along multiple dimensions: choice of communication channels, email response, web self-service, cross-channel consistency, single-channel (phone) cross-agent consistency and phone customer service*. Scores in these metrics were then abstracted to an overall Service Quotient (SQ) on a scale of 0.0 to 4.0, for each of the companies that were assessed, as well as for each industry sector and the overall market.
The numeric scores map to the following ratings:
? Poor (<1.0)
? Below average (>=1.0 and <2.0)
? Above average (>=2.0 and <3.0)
? Exceptional (3.0 to 4.0)
2010 Performance Assessment
• Overall customer experience scores were 1.7 (healthcare) and 1.4 (pharmaceuticals), both “below average.”
• The sectors performed better in phone customer service with “above average” scores of 2.5 (healthcare) and 2.2 (pharmaceuticals).
• Both sectors scored “below average” in providing interaction choices. The choice quotients were 1.8 (healthcare) and 1.3 (pharmaceuticals).
• Self-service scores for both sectors were “below average” at 1.7.
• Email scores were “below average” at 1.7 (healthcare) and 1.5 (pharmaceuticals). In fact, 50% of the companies in both sectors simply ignored email queries. Furthermore, the majority of the companies in both sectors did not acknowledge receipt of email queries—a common best practice that helps improve customer experience and set the right expectations with the customer—84% in healthcare and 64% in pharmaceuticals.
“Electronic communication channels such as email, web chat, and cobrowsing continue to increase in popularity, partly driven by generational preferences,” said Anand Subramaniam, VP of Marketing for eGain. “Forward-looking businesses in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries have the opportunity to get ahead by not only implementing strong capabilities in these channels but also by improving cross-channel and cross-agent consistency of knowledge and practices through a Customer Interaction Hub (CIH) strategy.”
Details of findings can be obtained by sending an email request to [email protected].
* Telephone customer service included criteria such as the number of transfers and hold time.
About eGain
eGain (OTC BB: EGAN.OB) is the leading provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software for on-site or on-demand deployment. For over a decade, hundreds of the world’s largest companies have relied on eGain to transform their traditional call centers, help desks, and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs (CIHs). Based on the Power of One™, the concept of one unified platform for multichannel customer interaction and knowledge management, eGain solutions improve customer experience, optimize service processes end to end, increase sales, and enhance contact center performance.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, eGain has operating presence in North America, EMEA and APAC. To learn more about us, visit www.eGain.com or call our offices: +1-800-821-4358 (US), +44-(0)-1753-464646 (EMEA), or +91-(0)-20-6608-9200 (APAC). Also, follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/egain) and Facebook (http://facebook.com/egain).
eGain, the eGain logo, and all other eGain product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of eGain Communications Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names and products mentioned in this release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies.
eGain media contact:
Jamie Abayan
Phone: 650-230-7532
Email: [email protected]
