New research reveals that 98% of U.S. Consumers say Customer Service is important to them when choosing a brand and forming loyalty with it. This situation is not just unique to the U.S. In the U.K., 97% of Customers believe that Customer Service is important to them when they choose where they do business. Furthermore, it also reports 63% of 1,000 U.K. consumers said they have stopped doing business with companies that blow it with Customer service.
According to the 2015 U.K. State of Multichannel Customer Service Report published by Parature and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it’s not a moment too soon. It’s the law of Customer Experience Supply and Demand: they demand it so you better supply it!
How are companies blowing it? They evoke the wrong Customer emotions during the experience. According the report, the common complaints from those Customers surveyed included:
Feeling Hassled:
- Feeling passed around between different agents during an interaction (23%)
- Needing to contact a company several times to resolve a single issue (23%)
Feeling Frustrated:
- Not finding their information or getting resolution online (16%)
- Waiting on hold too long (15%)
Not Feeling Valued:
- Navigating automated systems, feeling unable to reach a real person (13%)
- Suffering impolite agents (9%)
All of these complaints correspond with feelings. That’s because over 50% of a Customer Experience is how a Customer feels about it. Organizations that fail to make a Customer feel a certain way during their interactions get dropped by them. As the numbers show here not feeling valued and feeling hassled and frustrated are the type of emotions that facilitate getting dropped!
We know from our work with London Business School (that culminated in my bestselling book, The DNA of the Customer Experience, How emotions drive value, Palgrave Macmillan 2007) the emotions Frustrated and Valued are two that destroy and drive value, respectively. We normally establish how an organization is performing against a benched market research called Emotional Signature.
Customers are more demanding than in the past about the online presence of a company, too. Of the U.K. Customers surveyed, 92% of them expect a self-service portal on the website for Customer service, with 43% also saying they that portal to be mobile responsive. Sixty-five percent of these Customers also expect a response within 24 hours when they tweet about something to a company.
That’s just the U.K. For the U.S. Report, Parature and Microsoft Dynamics CRM,they produced this infographic:
It’s great that more companies are working on improving the Customer Experience for Customers. The thing about improvement is that it’s a journey, not a destination. Believe me, as soon as you think you have arrived, the destination gets changed again. Companies that didn’t even have a mobile site until last month shouldn’t relax now—they need to make sure it’s responsive to the online self-service Customer portal. Organizations that came up with great new live-agent systems at the call centers can’t relax until they learn how certain call protocols employed by agents come across as abrupt or cold with Customers calling in for help.
It comes down to this: Customer Experience needs to move to the next level of Customer Experience. And there is always another level to reach.
Customers are a demanding lot. They want the best price with the most comprehensive service, and they want access to all of these things 24 hours a day, seven days a week—on their smartphone! However, the truth is, organizations better give it to them. In today’s competitive and global marketplace, if Customers don’t get what they demand, they aren’t in short supply to go somewhere else to get it.
Are you ready to move your organization to the next level of Customer Experience?
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Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.
Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter & Periscope @ColinShaw_CX