Best of Call Center Week Recap – Customers Expect More. What are you Doing to Deliver?

Each year, Accenture completes a global study on customer experience. The most recent findings were the result of surveying over 13,000 end customers. Last week at the Best of Call Center Week Virtual Summit, we spoke in a session about the opportunities we have to create a better customer experience and addressed some of these findings.

One of the first customer experience questions Accenture asked was “what things frustrate you the most?” The top two answers were telling:

• 91% of customers are frustrated by having to contact a company several times for the same issue

• 90% of those surveyed said that being on hold a long time drove up their frustration

It’s clear that customers hate to wait on hold. Contact Babel’s 2013 research goes deeper by quantifying why customers hate waiting on hold. The number one reason – customers don’t know how much longer they will be waiting.

Customer frustration isn’t limited to the voice channel. Over the past five years, we’ve seen a dramatic growth in the percentage of customers utilizing nonvoice channels, such as the Web, mobile apps and social media. Frequently, interactions span two or more of these channels.

Accenture also uncovered views related to customers’ experience with multichannel interaction:

• 72% of customers were frustrated with inconsistent service across different contact channels of the same company
• 47% of customers were satisfied with their ability to receive customer support when they wanted it, on the channel they wanted it

Customers expect good service, regardless of channel. They also expect service to be consistent, to have context, and to be channel-appropriate. It seems there are many opportunities to improve customer service delivery in a multichannel environment.

At VHT, we’ve developed solutions for virtual queuing and callback functionality across channels, including voice, Web and mobile, and alternate channels, such as gaming consoles and cable boxes. More than 400 brands worldwide have implemented these tools. In 2013 alone, customers successfully received more than 86,000,000 VHT callbacks via voice, Web or mobile.

Both brands and customers are more satisfied when they have access to virtual queuing and call back software technologies. We’ve demonstrated a positive effect on:

• Increasing customer satisfaction
• Decreasing customer level of effort
• Increasing call center metrics

We know that customers are frustrated with waiting on hold. We know they expect consistent service across all channels. So, what steps are you taking to create a great experience? How are you improving customer service in a multichannel environment?