Conduent, a company which helps organisations improve correspondence with their clients, has conducted a Customer Experience study focussing on the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and the US.
They found that 47 percent of customers surveyed are not satisfied with the Customer Experience (CX) they encountered.
In the last two years, customer satisfaction has plunged, due to the disjointed and fragmented experience and the overall feeling of not being appreciated. The tech companies need to work on their delivery of CX and make the satisfaction gap between the customer and the supplier much smaller by improving communication channels.
The channels used for interaction with customers are mainly digital, and their usage has increased by 63 percent in the last two years, the survey found. Customers are now more prone to using emails, websites, live chats, and social media instead of going to the supplier directly or contacting them over the phone.
Conduent has identified three types of customers tech brands need to worry about:
- Do-It-Yourself Heroes – customers willing to go the extra mile and find the solution on their own (website self-help, on-device help app, and virtual assistant) instead of person-to-person interaction.
- Digital Conversationalists – customers that like to engage with the supplier using digital channels (email, website web chat, social media).
- Conversationalists – customers that prefer face-to-face or phone communication.
The survey also shows that 80 percent of customers’ issues are not resolved during the first-step resolution, which is why most customers are turning to the self-help option (54 percent). However, 75 percent of customers surveyed believe they are not provided with the adequate support to turn to the self-help option.
An interesting discovery was that most customers feel their experiences were of lower satisfaction levels when they used digital channels of communication compared to the other methods.
Another aspect companies need to take into consideration is that almost 65 percent of customers are loyal to their brand for at least three years. That sounds like a good number, but the survey found 45 percent of those customers would easily abandon their favourite brand if given enough incentive.
Consistent omni-channel strategy is the only solution for a brand to improve its customer satisfaction levels. If the customers feel that they are being well taken care of, their satisfaction levels will go up and loyalty to the brand will only grow stronger.