National Customer Service Week gives us an opportunity to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays in the success of a business, its brand perception and growth.
Delivering a high quality multi-channel customer service isn’t easy. Today’s consumer uses a variety of channels to make contact with a business, and as the number of touch-points have grown, so have their expectations for a consistent customer service – with minimal effort required.
Whilst the ability to provide a good customer service is a combination of strategy, internal processes and people management – the right technology also plays a vital role. Knowledge management is key to improving contact centre efficiency and customer experience, empowering customers and staff to resolve issues with greater speed, accuracy and consistency.
To highlight the importance of planning, implementing and constantly reviewing a multi-channel customer service strategy, we’ve compiled some interesting statistics.
The majority of consumers wants and expects to be able to self-serve answers to their questions online.
- 67% of consumers use web self-service knowledge to find answers to their questions. (Source: Forrester)
- By 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. (Source: Gartner)
- 45% of consumers will abandon their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their questions. (Source: Forrester)
- 90% of consumers will always check a website before e-mailing or calling a company. (Source: Synthetix)
- By 2015, 50% of online customer self-service search activities will be done by virtual agents. (Source: Gartner)
- 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer. (Source: Forrester)
- 63% of online consumers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat. (Source: Forrester)
- 26% of consumers would use live chat if they cannot self serve. (Source: Synthetix)
- 38% of online consumers said they had made their purchase due to a chat session. (Source: Forrester)
- Online chat adoption among customers has risen from 30% in 2009 to 43% in 2012. (Source: Forrester)
- By 2015, there will be more people accessing the web using a mobile device than through a PC. (Source: IDC)
- 43% of companies class mobile customer service as a priority. (Source: ICMI)
- Tablet sales are predicted to overtake PC sales permanently by 2017. (Source: Gartner)
- 62% of companies think mobile customer service is a competitive differentiator. (Source: ICMI)
- 75% of consumers think companies should make answers to all their common questions available via Smartphones. (Source: Synthetix)
- 70% of businesses are anticipated to use social media as part of their customer service programs by mid 2014. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
- Failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in the churn rate for existing customers. (Source: Gartner)
- 46% of consumers have used social media to vent their frustrations about a poor service experience. (Source: American Express)
- Adoption of social customer care programs increased fivefold from 12% in 2010 to 59% in 2013. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
- 55% of consumers now expect companies to provide customer service via social media sites such as Facebook. (Source: Synthetix)
- Companies delivering customer support through social media achieve superior gains – 7.5% v’s 2.9%. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
Contact centre knowledge management:
As todays customers empower themselves with information across multiple channels – contact centre agents are under increasing pressure to ensure they offer instant, up-to-date and consistent answers to customer enquiries.
- 42% of service agents are unable to efficiently resolve customer issues due to disconnected systems, archaic user interfaces, and multiple applications. (Source: Forrester)
- On average agents spend 11% of their time looking for information needed to manage customer interactions. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
- 26% of consumers have experienced being transferred from agent to agent without any resolution of their problem. (Source: 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer)
- 46% of contact centres identify improving agent productivity and utilisation as a main objective. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
Free resource for developing a business case for self-service software
We’ve written a useful guide to developing a business case for self-service software, giving straight-talking advice on how to, confirm your need for customer self-service software, set your requirements within the context of your organisation’s wider business objectives and build the analysis you need to get the decision made and approved.
