Consumers no longer think in terms of ‘channels’ when it comes to purchasing or researching a product or service, they simply expect to receive a seamless customer service across them all. So why are so many organisations still treating customer service with a segmented approach?
With more than 40% of online adults being multi-device users and over 70% of the UK population now owning a smartphone, consumers are increasingly turning to online channels to contact an organisation to resolve a customer service issue.
Figures show however that response rates and times to questions sent via e-mail or posted on social channels are proving disappointing, having a significant effect on customer satisfaction levels.
- Only 65% of questions are responded to by brands on Facebook (Source: socialbakers)
- 25% of user posts on Facebook pages are questions (Source: socialbakers)
- Over 1.5 million direct questions go unanswered (Source: socialbakers)
- Average question response time is 9 hours (Source: socialbakers)
- 20% of users posts mentioning brand accounts are questions (Source: socialbakers)
- Only 32% of brands have a dedicated customer service handle (Source: Simply Measured)
- 59% of organisations take more than 8 hours to provide a response to e-mail enquiries (Source: Kana)
Today’s consumer no longer has a 9-5pm mentality, they expect organisations to provide customer care 24/7, and as the number of contact channels continues to grow, so does this demand.
With a large percentage of posts on social media being questions, it makes sense to give customers the opportunity to self-serve answers to the most commonly asked questions themselves online, rather than keeping them in a perpetual state of hold.
Enhancing social customer service support via an intuitive FAQ search tool or live chat via a tab on a company Facebook page, website (optimised for mobile) or during an e-mail or contact form enquiry, helps many leading organisations to not only reduce their level of in-bound enquiries but more importantly to resolve the majority of customer enquiries quickly and efficiently.
The key to customer satisfaction is helping customers to easily find an answer to their questions before they are forced to press the send, post or tweet key…
Find out more here.
